Montag | 11.05.2026 | 19:00 h

Zu Gast: Karel Doing - Ruins and Resilience

This program crosses Karel Doing's oeuvre in seven-league boots and focuses on his experimental work in photochemical film. The program starts with four early films that show his roots in DiY filmmaking, performance and experimental music. The next four films highlight his recent experiments with his self-invented phytogram technique plus a lens based film that also takes plants as its main subject. The final two films are 'abstract concrete', both having a rough indexicality that pivots away from the world as we know it. Within the context of this program, the notion of the archive is not something which is frozen in time here but rather an ongoing process that constantly changes shape and meaning.

 

Filmprogramm (69 min)

Fort/Vlees - 1 min | 1988 | (Super8)

Meni - 3 min | 1992-1994 | (Super8)

Whirlwind - 9 min | 1998 | (16mm)

Energy Energy - 7 min | 1999 | (16mm)

The Mulch Spider's Dream - 14 min | 2018 | (16mm)

A Perfect Storm - 3 min | 2022 | (16mm)

Babbler, Fairy and Thrush - 4 min | 2022 | (16mm)

Oxyge - 6 min | 2023 | (16mm)

Liquidator - 8 min | 2010 | 2K (35mm)

Wilderness Series - 14 min | 2016 | 2K (35mm cinemascope)

 

Karel Doing (*1965) is an independent artist, award winning filmmaker, and researcher whose practice investigates the relationship between culture and nature by means of analogue and organic process, experiment, and co-creation. His work has been shown across continents at festivals, in cinemas, and in galleries. He was a founding member of Studio één, a pioneering DiY film laboratory. He has invented “phytography,” a technique that combines plants and photochemical emulsion. In 2024 his book Ruins and Resilience: the Longevity of Experimental Film was published by Goldsmiths Press.

[ www.kareldoing.net ]

 

Details

Fort/Vlees - 1 min | 1988 | (Super8)
Describing an imaginary architectural space with my own body.

Meni - 3 min | 1992-1994 | (Super8)
The making of Meni consisted of an obsessive unraveling of a series of dance movements. The movements were cut into very short fragments (0,5 to 1,5 seconds). These fragments were edited into repeating patterns. Through exchanging fragments and double exposure the film begets an intriguing and complex rhythm.

Whirlwind - 9 min | 1998 | (16mm)
A reworking of footage shot during the preparations and executions of performances by the British group Loophole and the Dutch artist Karel Doing. Using frame by frame, long exposures and optical effects, these performances were manipulated and intensified. The essence of cinema, writing with light, is portrayed as a hallucination.

Energy Energy - 7 min | 1999 | (16mm)
Found-footage film, compiled from industrial, instructional and promotional films from the first half of the twentieth century, presenting progressive thought and technological development. But did everything really go so well?

The Mulch Spider's Dream - 14 min | 2018 | (16mm)
What is it like to be a spider? A creature that lives in the same environment as we do and yet has an experience far removed from ours. The film evokes a non-human world through shape, colour and rhythm. The seemingly abstract images are made by using the internal chemistry of plants interacting with photographic emulsion, a type of image that I have called a "phytogram".

A Perfect Storm - 3 min | 2022 | (16mm)
A Perfect Storm is a landscape film or, more precisely, a landscape imprinted on the film's emulsion. The artist has used seeds, tiny composite flowers and other small elements of cultivated plants that grow in his garden and wild plant species gathered from a nearby nature reserve.

Babbler, Fairy and Thrush - 4 min | 2022 | (16mm)
An unfiltered stream of perception: small objects and grand panoramas appear simultaneously. The certainties of near and far, detail and overview, inside and outside are deliberately thrown into confusion. Aided by in-camera superimposition and traveling mattes, a near abstract experience is created. Sunlight filters through semi-transparent surfaces, while small holes and cracks allow the light to travel unrestrained.

Oxyge - 6 min | 2023 | (16mm)
Blades of grass create the sensation of a high speed movement. Sparks fly off in all directions. A road-movie beyond the human.

Liquidator - 8 min | 2010 | 2K (35mm)
A project making innovative use of existing archive images of Willy Mullens’ silent film Haarlem (1922). The original film shows the city in straightforward shots and camera movements. Due to deterioration these images changed in a dramatic way. In the adaption Karel Doing zooms in on these effects with the aid of digital techniques like optical flow and morphing. Michal Osowski collaborated on the project with sound that is directly linked to the image, he used the changes in density of the film to control complex filters and distortion effects.

Wilderness Series - 14 min | 2016 | 2K (35mm cinemascope)
By using plants, mud and salt in conjunction with alternative photochemistry, images are 'grown' on motion picture film. What at first instance is perceived as abstract turns out to be a concrete precipitation from phenomena that surround us in everyday life. The 'aliveness' of the images is underlined by Andrea Szigetvári's evocative sound-design.

[ Abbildung oben: aus dem Film 'A Perfect Storm' (2022) von Karel Doing ]