“The CONTENT carried by film,” according to the Austrian experimental filmmaker Peter Kubelka (born 1934), “is linked inseparably to the MATERIAL OBJECT. Film, like any other medium, can only be fully understood in its ORIGINAL FORM” (Kubelka, 2011). Kubelka’s structural film Arnulf Rainer essentially embodies the four basic elements of cinema—light and darkness, sound and silence—following a sort of rhythmical modulation. Constructed from both clear and black film frames and devoid of perceptible imagery, Kubelka’s film when projected produces a stroboscopic experience evoked by the intermittent flashes of light and dark frames. The visual confrontation with this work is jarring, to say the least. Arnulf Rainer exposed the simple material qualities of film—the film’s materiality—and turned viewing the film into a multisensory experience.
—AG

Image: Courtesy of the artist.