Title: Untitled [Two Guys]
Format: HD Video Installation, Colour, Stereo
Length: 8 Minutes
year: 2008
Country of Production: Germany
Producer /Director: Mario Pfeifer
credits
Cast: Sami Moss Mardina & Yeisen Acosta Medina
Associate Producer: Jakob schillinger
Cinematography: Matthias biber
Sound Design: Thomas Wallmann
Montage: Mario PfeifeR
Light Design: Manuel kinzer
supported by: KulturAllianzen; Interflugs Berlin; Asta Berlin
Untitled [Two Guys] is the product of close collaboration and dialog with two Berlin-Kreuzberg adolescents with a migration background. Based on a fictionalized script the two protagonists move through social spaces, and occupy these spaces aesthetically. Their acting/playing with a rich repertoire of body language, modish gestures and expansive music escalates the ambivalent relationship between the two and the camera that, following them, does not so much capture but project. Between the viewer and the protagonists, the media-apparatus itself becomes more and more prominent, bringing its own mediality to the fore, claiming an eerily violent presence. Mario Pfeifer in this work creates an exceptional visibility of the protagonists, the viewers, the author and the medium that is the global circuit of lifestyle culture. They all appear as actors; the video is the site of their conflict-ridden entanglement, in which no one ultimately exercises control or follows their interests. The all embracing mediality manifests itself in random set-offs of immanent violence – a power that functions without being owned. Untitled [Two Guys] captures and deconstructs the functioning of (sub)cultural codes in a "globalized society" and the mechanisms of image-production and reproduction.
Selected Screenings
Sun Screen Festivals, Arsenal, Berlin, 2008
California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles, 2009
ATA Gallery, San Francisco, 2009
SE8, London, 2009
Theatre Du Chatelet, Paris, 2009
Marubi, Tirana, 2009
Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid, 2010
European Media Arts Festival, 2010
Mulhouse 010 Biennale, 2010
ART BASEL FILM, 2010
Museum Folkwang Essen, 2010
Nomination for 'Hessischer Filmpreis 2008, Frankfurt am Main, Germany & Salon Video Art Prize 2010, London
More details on the project and the exhibition history can be found here.