Conference Stand

In an annual cycle the Site-Specific Film research group selects situations and/or architectures that inspire filmic responses.
This time around, the group built an installation for the Conference on Artistic Research in Film. At the heart of the development was the idea of conference as a situation in which people with mutual interest in each other's approach meet. Conference as a time and place for focused, yet relaxed and somewhat daring communication. Relaxed - because there is no need to convince the other of the relevance of the topic, daring - because some risks may have to be taken to advance the experience in relation to the topic.
The idea of the Conference Stand was to create a lobby to the conference hall. A space where each participant has the choice to either drift or engage in further discussions or pursue one's own thoughts; an installation that reflects the idea of the conference.
After a phase of joint discussions and brainstorming on terms like drifting, thinking, communicating, break room, installation, conference, being online, artistic research, peers, university, filmmaking, each participant started in their own direction and began their own individual work. Any cinematic idea that emanated from there could be followed up. The approach of the group's work is not a thematic one, it is about seeing impulses come and go, working spontaneously and being open to the surprise of the result.
The result is a filmic note rather than a work, it is there to inspire the next move. Making this distinction, however, serves primarily to realise that each work is, in turn, also just a note that inspires the next step.

To present the Conference Stand in a digital format, we had to create a suitable framework for encountering the works. On the resulting individual web pages, scribbles, notes or thoughts that accompanied the work float above the images; scrolling down reveals the filmic result.

Translating the idea of the Conference Stand - as a space that wants to host relaxed thinking on artistic research in film - into the digital format also meant that we had to focus on achieving a tangible presence of the space. During the online conference we will probe a multi-camera setting to convey that.