EVENT LANGUAGE: GERMAN AND ENGLISH

Volkstheater Wien and Academy of Fine Arts Vienna present

The American essayist Rebecca Solnit called him a “pivot between the old world and ours”: Photographer and inventor Eadweard Muybridge was an important precursor of Hollywood, but he was also a ruthless murderer, considered cranky and insane. His collaboration with railroad tycoon and university founder Leland Stanford in Palo Alto also makes him an early pioneer of Silicon Valley’s creative economy. What if you read the story of his life as the foundational text of today’s media society?

PROGRAM

18:00 Admission

18:30 Short introductory lecture
BULLET TIME – Who was Eadweard Muybridge? by Alexander Kerlin
Alexander Kerlin, author of the play BULLET TIME, introduces the audience to the life and work of Eadweard Muybridge and his era in a short lecture with visual examples and anecdotes.

19:00 Discussion
“A bloody picture is better than no picture at all.” Eadweard Muybridge as a ghost of the present with film scholar Lisa Gotto and photo historian Bernd Stiegler, moderated by Matthias Seier
Film scholar Lisa Gotto (University of Vienna) and literary scholar and photo historian Bernd Stiegler (University of Konstanz) discuss Muybridge and the birth of the moving image, images and murderers, the patriarchal violence of the cult of genius and a present in the endless stream of images with dramaturge Matthias Seier.

20:00 Break & Drinks

20:30 Artist talk and film screening
Unsupported Transit by Zachary Formwalt
The video artist and filmmaker Zachary Formwalt presents his video work UNSUPPORTED TRANSIT (2011). A new stock exchange building, designed by Rem Koolhaas, is being built on a gigantic construction site in Shenzen. The film links Eadweard Muybridge’s early sequential photographs with the principle of time-lapse photography and Karl Marx’s idea of capital, which seems to move “of its own accord”.

21:15 Artist Talk
Danielle Genadry in conversation with Michael Höpfner
The large-format paintings of Lebanese-French artist Danielle Gendary repeatedly reference iconic motifs from Muybridges’ landscape photographs of the American West. Her work explores the potential of images to create their own temporality and to sharpen our awareness of presence and transience. In conversation with artist and photographer Michael Höpfner, she explains her work and her inspirations.

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A cross-genre cooperation of the Volkstheater Vienna with the Academy of Fine Arts and the VIENNA ART WEEK on the occasion of the world premiere of BULLET TIME at Volkstheater Wien (click here for more info).

Christmas treat: All symposium visitors receive a 50% discount on the BULLET TIME performance on December 28 at the Volkstheater!