Sylvia Schedelbauer

Way Fare DV, 6'30'', 2009 Germany

Tell me something about you and artistic background.
I was born in Tokyo, Japan, where I grew up until age 19. My education has been exclusively German, and so is my passport. Questions of identity and cultural belonging have always accompanied my path through life so far, ever since I can remember. And these questions largely inform the themes I work through in my art: personal and historical narratives, memory, location, feelings of disconnection, moving through and in-between spaces, and negotiating inter-cultural issues. All my films have been very process-oriented. I don’t start with a fixed idea of what the outcome should be, no script or screenplay or anything like that. What comes first is an image, or rather a sequence of images, a piece of sound, or music, or a quote, or a fragment of a story.  

Tell me about this film, initial idea and work process.
I was asked to make a short film for a venue called Light Industry in Brooklyn, NY. The event was a tribute to Bruce Conner, who passed away in 2008. I originally made “way fare” for the screening there. I think “way fare” corresponds in many ways with the short that came before it, “False Friends.” There is a boy, now a man, who is walking, who is restless, who keeps going, someone who doesn’t seem to arrive, someone who is haunted by something that came before, by memory, by history, by missing links. A wanderer who keeps on looking for clues, who walks through the world, as through life, to find the connections between the geography of time and the psychology of space.

Are you working on new projects at the moment?
There are sketches and projects in different stages of completion. I hesitate to make any confining statements about any of them, because I never know entirely what they will turn out to be until they are finished.

Do you have specific influences in your film/video making?
I’m not part of a generation that belonged to a specific “movement”; I didn’t come out of punk or anything. I think growing up in Japan in the “bubble generation” set a very specific environment, but this fact didn’t imply a clear political path. There have been some pivotal moments in my life, some of them were triggered by art works, some by writings, or music, others by encounters with other artists. I find it hard to totalize the body of work of one or other person as something that was fundamentally influencing, because there are many more factors that feed into artistic processes: lived experience and environment, human interactions, education, aquired knowledge, world events, news reports, the internet, and the list could go on. Having said that, I’ll name just a few works that made a strong impact: Tracy Moffat’s photo series “Scarred for Life”, Gary Hill’s “Incidence of Catastrophe”, Shelly Silver’s “37 Stories About Leaving Home”, Trinh T. Minh-ha’s “Surname Viet Given Name Nam”, Craig Baldwin’s “Tribulation99”. I’m interested in works that have a discursive, political potential. Works that speak from the heart, that evoke an emotional and/or intellectual response. Art for me should be a place for negotiation; ideally, it should trigger thought processes, and open up spaces for perception and perspectives.

Why is it important for you to show your film/video in a festival?
There aren’t very many venues and platforms for experimental films, except some microcinemas, and certainly film festivals. To me, showing experimental films in a gallery or museum can be problematic, if the projection conditions are compromised and people walk in and out of a screening. I prefer the focused environment of a cinema, where there is a clear schedule of when a film program starts and ends. I like it when people get together and have a viewing experience together, as an audience, and when there are discussions and reflections that follow up on the screening. I think in an age where “communal” cinema culture is increasingly outdated by “individualized” private viewing experiences on TV sets and computer screens, film festivals are places where collective viewing experiences can be nurtured and cultivated.  

What role do you think Oslo Screen Festival should have to promote your work?
The festival offers the opportunity to show my film to an audience in Oslo. But aside from that, last year Oslo Screen Fest provided exhibition opportunities outside of the festival, by touring with programs to other locations, and in this way expanding the range of exposure. I hope very much that Oslo Screen Fest will continue to provide a platform for moving image arts in the future.