The Cin­e­ma Complex

In Daniel von Sturmer’s suite of works,’ The Cin­e­ma Com­plex’, a famil­iar cast of objects appear: pen­cils, plas­ticine, blocks con­struct­ed of coloured paper — those objects and mate­ri­als that are often close at hand in the stu­dio. They spin around on what seems to be a sta­t­ic ground; they are stacked upon one anoth­er in tow­ers which defy our con­ven­tion­al sense of ​‘up’. In many of von Sturmer’s works, the most mod­est of mate­ri­als con­tra­dict our under­stand­ing of physics and chal­lenge our per­cep­tion of all mov­ing image as ​‘doc­u­men­tary’. But he is no spe­cial effects artist: von Sturmer’s footage is nev­er manip­u­lat­ed — rather it is the view­er whose per­spec­tive must shift.

For ​‘The Cin­e­ma Com­plex’, von Sturmer has cre­at­ed sev­en dis­crete video works, sev­en ​‘sequences’ that com­pel their audi­ence to look and move beyond the screen. The actions per­formed before the cam­era are often bound with the site of their pro­jec­tion: the objects in Sequence 4, pushed to the precipice of a white A4 paper tow­er, fall beyond the low­er edge of the screen and dis­ap­pear, with a thump, to the floor of the gallery. Unlike the dark­ened mazes of the cin­e­ma com­plex­es to which we are accus­tomed, von Sturmer’s is ful­ly lit, empha­sis­ing his pol­i­cy of full dis­clo­sure. The archi­tec­ture of the space is on show, along­side the pro­jec­tors, the cables and the screens that func­tion to make each work vis­i­ble. Also on view in ​‘The Cin­e­ma Com­plex’ are sev­er­al dis­crete ​‘walls’, struc­tures that refer to scenery flats used in the­atri­cal pro­duc­tions. Whilst pro­vid­ing ​‘behind the scenes’ access, these screens also serve to block vision and to divert pas­sage through the field of mov­ing images.

Von Sturmer fur­ther chal­lenges the con­ven­tions of the cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence by con­struct­ing a sit­u­a­tion which can­not be pas­sive­ly received. Mov­ing into the space of von Sturmer’s archi­tec­ture and image, and by each indi­vid­ual play of objects, one becomes the sub­ject of an even larg­er figure/​ground proposition.

Despite the mea­sured force behind the objects in front of the cam­era, and the delib­er­ate and con­sid­ered place­ment of each ele­ment of the instal­la­tion, the works com­pris­ing ​‘The Cin­e­ma Com­plex’ retain a sense of exper­i­men­ta­tion; each one a hypoth­e­sis. These are the ​‘prac­tice runs’ that com­prise a practice.

Although, as native and sophis­ti­cat­ed view­ers of the mov­ing image, we expect the plot to come to a cli­max, von Sturmer refus­es to admit to any spec­tac­u­lar end­ing. These videos are in process as much as about process. For all of von Sturmer’s mate­r­i­al experiements and deft sequenc­ing, ulti­mate­ly each view­er becomes the sub­ject of the work; and each decides upon the final edit.