Installation views at The Viral City, Goethe-Institute Montréal. © Goethe-Institut Montreal, Monik Richter
As poster in the city during Stadt findet Kunst, poster campaign curated by Oliver Möst. © Claudia Kugler
Project synopsis in ENGLISH
In 2012, I built a hat that resembled a surveillance camera. I wanted to create a sculpture or fashion accessory to embody a rising feeling inside of me of being watched, recorded, evaluated. In 2013 and 2014 I was living and studying in The Hague, where I noticed bouquets of surveillance camera systems at every corner of the street, and took photos posing with my surveillance hat.
In 2017 I started working with 16mm film material and together with the cinematographer in this project, Lars Preisser, I found a format in which I performatively interact with urban architectures and surveillance systems in the character of a nameless protagonist, a woman whose head resembles a surveillance camera. In various episodes she is observed walking through almost deserted streets in former socialist cities, exchanging glances with surveillance cameras. Often these cameras are located around important public buildings. The editing technique suggests ad-hoc transitional changes of place and is a comment on physical and psychological alienation from ones surroundings.
I have personal references to places we filmed in. For example, I was born before the fall of the Berlin Wall in Sofia during the socialist regime where I filmed/watched the diplomat’s buildings on the same street that I once lived on. Like many people under socialism, my family was affected by state surveillance and secrecy.
In the project I am further concerned with the relationship between moving image and photography, the interplay of materiality in analog and digital film, the boundary between performance, documentation and fiction, to be racialized and read as female in public space, intimacy, disability and prosthesis, desire, architecture, body and technology.
In a next step, I am currently working on a narrative short film with sound based on this archive.
Projektsynopsis in DEUTSCH
2012 habe ich einen Hut gebaut der einer Überwachunsgkamera ähnelt. Ich wollte eine Skulptur oder Modeaccessoir kreieren, um das Gefühl in mir zu verkörpern, beobachtet, aufgenommen und bewertet zu werden. 2013-2014 habe ich in Den Haag studiert, wo mir Sträuße an Überwachungssystemen an jeder Ecke aufgefallen sind, und habe Fotos mit meinem Überwachungskamerahut gemacht.
2017 habe ich begonnen, mit 16mm Filmmaterial zu arbeiten, und zusammen mit dem Cinematographen in diesem Projekt, Lars Preisser, ein Format gefunden, in dem ich performativ mit urbanen Architekturen und Überwachungssystemen interagiere in der Figur einer namenlosen Protagonistin, deren Kopf einer Überwachungskamera gleicht. In verschiedenen Episoden wird sie dabei beobachtet, wie sie in ehemaligen sozialistischen Städten durch fast menschenleere Straßen geht und Blicke mit Überwachungskameras austauscht. Oft befinden sich diese Kameras im Umkreis von wichtigen öffentlichen Gebäuden. Die Schnitttechnik deutet übergangslose Ortswechsel an und kommentiert körperliche und psychologische Entfremdung der eigenen Umgebung.
Ich habe persönliche Bezüge zu allen Orten, an denen wir gefilmt haben. Zum Beispiel wurde ich vor dem Fall der Mauer in Sofia während des sozialistischen Regimes geboren, und habe viele Jahre später die Straße gefilmt/überwacht, auf der ich einst gewohnt hatte. Wie viele Menschen im Sozialismus war meine Familie von Überwachung und Geheimniskrämerei betroffen. In dem Projekt beschäftigt mich die Beziehung von Bewegtbild und Fotografie, die Grenze zwischen Performance, Dokumentation und Fiktion, rassifiziert und weiblich gelesen zu werden im öffentlichen Raum, Intimität, Behinderung und Prothese, Begehren, Architektur, Körper und Technologie.
Im nächsten Schritt arbeite ich auf der Grundlage dieses Archivs derzeit an einem narrativen Kurzfilm mit Ton.
Screenings and film festivals (N for award nomination), different versions of footage
2024 One Day AIR 2024. The Watch. Flutgraben e.V. Berlin, DE
2022 Third Space Walk. Flâneuses* between virtual and material urban spaces. Galerie im Medienhaus, UdK Berlin, DE
2021 Ultrakurzfilmrolle. Kunstraum .mpeg. Filmische Iniative Leipzig (FILZ). Leipzig, DE
2021 The Viral City. Goethe-Institut Montreal. Montreal, CA
2021 8th Arquiteturas Film Festival. Lisboa, PT N - won honorable mention
2020 Hot Steam III. Online and on Community Channel Cambridge. Cambridge, MA, USA
2020 Video Art Miden. Moved to online edition due to pandemic. Kalamata, GR
2020 28th Artifact Small Film Format Festival. Postponed to a later date due to pandemic. Calgary, CA
2019 12th this human world - International Human Rights Film Festival. Vienna, AT N
2019 1st Festival 1666 - Festival Internacional de Cinema 16mm. Sao Paolo/Rio de Janeiro, BR N
2019 18th Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival. Lausanne, CH N
2019 20th dresdner schmalfilmtage (Small Format Film Festival Dresden). Dresden, DE N (4 Minute edit under same name)
2018 Night Screenings. feldfuenf. Berlin, DE (only episode no. 0617)
2018 34th International Shortfilm Festival interfilm Berlin, DE (only episode no. 0617) (as Beatrice Schuett)
2018 35th Kasseler Dokfest (Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival). Kassel, DE (6 Minute edit under same name) (as Beatrice Mumdschijan-Schuett)
2018 With members of the class expanded cinema in the framework of Porschismus #12: The artist is absent. C.Rockefeller Center for Contemporary Art. Dresden, DE (only episode no. 0617)
2018 Screening & Artist Talks with class of expanded cinema. PACT Zollverein. Essen, DE (only episode no. 0617)
Art in the public space
2020 Stadt findet Kunst. District office Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. 20 billboards with a motif from Documentation Report (No. 0619). Berlin, DE
Photo festivals (N for award nomination)
2020 Photometria Awards 2020 "Stalk Me". 12th Photometria Festival. Still from Documentation Report (No. 0918). Ioannina, GR N
Jury statements
Arquiteturas Film Festival, 2021, Lisbon, Portugal: “State surveillance is a very pertinent topic and this film addresses it as an act of self-expression. A cinematic experience where the body becomes a device to register the space around it. Atmospheric, beautiful and timeless images and colors and the absence of sound contribute to the film’s magic.”
Peter Haueis, The Viral City, Goethe Institut Montréal: “Documentation, Observation, Surveillance. Monitoring public spaces, buildings, people. Beatrice Moumdjian visits empty urban spaces where cameras are looking into the void that is left behind the people that are in lockdown. What are they looking at, when everybody is at home?”
Press
2022 Rûm magazine. Graz, AT
2018 DokBlog about Sachstandsdokumentation/Documentation Report at Kasseler Dokfest. Mainz, DE
2013 Neue Zuercher Zeitung. 12.08.2013. Ueberwachungskunst und -mode. Peter Glaser. Zuerich, CH (as BPSchuett)
Credits
Director of Photography: Lars Preisser
Director, Performer: Beatrice Schuett Moumdjian
Editors: Beatrice Schuett Moumdjian, Lars Preisser
Surveillance Camera Hat: Beatrice Schuett Moumdjian, 2012
Filmed on Wittner Chrome and exp. Kodak Vision2 250D
Motion picture film developer: laborberlin, Andec
Motion picture film scan: Andec
Copyright
.Copyright photos of exterior screening 'The Viral City': © Goethe-Institut Montreal, Monik Richter