Video/Kino+(Ja/Nein, Ernst Schmidt jr. 1968

Heimo Zobernig

Video/Kino+(Ja/Nein, Ernst Schmidt jr. 1968, 1999

Artwork text

The abstract dots making up the television image slowly become more concrete and show the picture of a television, endlessly reproduced, which is produced by a camera-monitor feedback. The camera zooms out, and turns away from the television towards the next room, a cinema auditorium completely in white. The screen is a black square flanked by a red and a green picture. Suddenly, the color is inverted, the cinema screen turns white and fills the entire monitor screen: the experimental film Ja/Nein by Ernst Schmidt Jr. begins. After the film has ended, the camera zooms out and the color suddenly reappears. Finally, the camera turns away and returns to its starting point, to the micro-components of the television image. The loop continues … Zobernig contrasts the “classical” avant-garde film—and its concern with cinematic characteristics—with video as a medium and the possibilities that it offers for self-reflection. In an almost narrative presentation, interspersed with different quotes and allusions, video and cinema are shown in a state of dialectic dependence. (Claudia Slanar)