cultural copy

Found footage films literally use found images: material from archive, television and amateur films that is extracted from its original context. Bruce Conner can be considered as one of the most influential experimental filmmakers who worked almost exclusively with found footage. In many of his films, the collective image memory shared by the viewer becomes an ethnographic object treated by the dissecting hands of the filmmaker – a working method that Peter Kubelka perfected in his film 'Unsere Afrikareise' (1966). Adrian Brunel's 'Crossing the Great Sagrada' already used the appropriation of found film material in 1924 for a satire of British society and its longing for exotic adventures.

Brunel's early masterpiece forms the prelude to this programme, which thematizes the subversive power of found footage montage on the one hand, and the mutual transferability and fabrication of contemporary cultural codes on the other. Kip Fulbeck, for example, claims to be the originator of certain Disney characters in his video 'Lilo & Me' (2003). As a child, he found that they were the only identification figures that complied with his multi-ethnic looks. In a humorous way, it is demonstrated what role processes of acquiring and copying – no matter if they are developed autonomously or controlled by the mass media – play in shaping individual and social identities. F.W.

Found footage films literally use found images: material from archive, television and amateur films that is extracted from its original context. Bruce Conner can be considered as one of the most influential experimental filmmakers who worked almost exclusively with found footage. In many of his films, the collective image memory shared by the viewer becomes an ethnographic object treated by the dissecting hands of the filmmaker – a working method that Peter Kubelka perfected in his film 'Unsere Afrikareise' (1966). Adrian Brunel's 'Crossing the Great Sagrada' already used the appropriation of found film material in 1924 for a satire of British society and its longing for exotic adventures.

Brunel's early masterpiece forms the prelude to this programme, which thematizes the subversive power of found footage montage on the one hand, and the mutual transferability and fabrication of contemporary cultural codes on the other. Kip Fulbeck, for example, claims to be the originator of certain Disney characters in his video 'Lilo & Me' (2003). As a child, he found that they were the only identification figures that complied with his multi-ethnic looks. In a humorous way, it is demonstrated what role processes of acquiring and copying – no matter if they are developed autonomously or controlled by the mass media – play in shaping individual and social identities. F.W.