Yves Netzhammer – Furniture of Proportions   

- Please tell us a little more on the background of the film?

Initially, what was in my mind, was not finished images but rather an uneasy sense of difference from “the Other,” from “Others,” and the biographical consequences of this difference. I wondered if it was possible to talk about this difference, or, better said, to fill it with pictorial media. Maybe something could be achieved with empathic image characteristics. At the same time, paradoxically, I felt very skeptical about the range of the self. I found that the definition of the self incorporates the Other. The Other becomes the connection with my self. If I have to explain how I start on a work, my answer is, “In the middle”. My perception becomes intensified and searching, hungry for communicative accidents on the social, media, and personal levels.


- Why was it important for you to make this film?

I’ve made a few films in recent years. The feature common to these films is something along the lines of the idea of storing up empathy with respect to a wide variety of actions that provide and violate identity. I kept bumping up against my limits, its limits. I was looking for fields of meaning and stability, I was looking for a topographic support that would lead me into story-telling. In this work I asked myself, precisely, what can I rely on in my experiential context? With what proportions, with what gestures, with what degree of fragility must a story be constructed in order for it to behave consistent with my perception and my representational possibilities? I was interested in the question of how you can talk about personal questions without running the risk of falling into the conventional models of pathos.



- Is the way you worked on this film similar to The Subjectivisation of Repetition? How do these two works relate to each other?

In 2007 I was invited by the Swiss Federal Office for Culture to perform in the Swiss Country Pavilion in Venice. In this situation it was important for me to contrast the silent, imaginary quality of my work with the existing pavilion space. I used an architectonic concept to combine the narrative planes of the images and sound with the language of the space. In terms of content, I wanted to evolve more intensively in the direction of oppositional problem areas in the context of a country pavilion. Here it was important to me not to compete with the social sciences or to fall into their suspicion of illustration, but rather to develop an independent, poetic image cosmos. I proceeded in the way that Kleist describes when he talks about the gradual production of thoughts during speech. I wanted to intensify this associative procedure in the image-making process, as an approach to the existential complex of themes. As an image-maker, I often feel pressure to achieve personal legitimation, because socially the radius of influence of open, circular picture stories is practically obsolete. Even so, I try to understand the quality of sensitivity as a resource by means of which we can develop a point of identification with the suffering of others. This starting point allows the formation of a new relationship with the passive act of viewing, and a more critical evaluation. My experiences with this work led me to the start of the introspectively organized subject matter of Furniture of Proportions.


- Can you tell us if you get inspiration in your work also by watching work by other filmmakers? Who are they? In what way do they inspire you?

I like to start by watching a lot of films and in this way expand my field of perception and broaden my sensitivity. I blend a wide variety of genres and demands until a behavior, a reaction, develops out of the consumption. However, I often find the desired imaginative consistency in literary contexts. Maybe that’s because when you’re reading you’re guided in a specific manner by a text idea and yet you’re able to hold your own images very close in your mind. The confrontation with this manifold mediumistic Opposite relativizes me, operates as an appraiser of perceptions and a producer of images, sometimes in a problematic way, and allows me to harbor doubts and to slow down. The subsequent specific work is a matter of decoding this vacuum by means of pictorial methods. To make myself feel more competent, I move via feeling into thinking. Very original, I think.


- Can you say something about the techniques you used. The choice between film and video. The relation between the image and the sound.

I see myself as a draughtsman with totally classical training who uses pictorial experiments and a kind of testing process to chafe against what is called reality. Initially I asked myself what form of subjectivity I wanted to work in stylistically but above all in terms of storytelling in order to approach my subjects. For this purpose I sought a model-like Opposite that on the one hand is very foreign to me and on the other hand also raises a lot of questions. My experience as a draughtsman led me to the computer, which as a medium offers individual freedom of movement and material distance and thus makes the type of structural subjectivity that interests me into a subject. I began to understand that this artistic modeling method made possible by animation and my programs allows me to embody the inexpressible reality in the most precise manner.



- Is it important for you that you film will be screened in a competition programme?

In recent years I’ve had good opportunities to present my work in various exhibition contexts. I moved from drawing to animation, from animation to objects. Basically, however, my main interest is still in idea-based film storytelling, for which in the “fast” art contexts, however, there is often no vocabulary, no criticism, and hence, unfortunately, no critical examination.

- Could you tell something about the next project you will be working on?

I like thinking about my future “pet project,” a lengthy, concentrated feature-film project based on my previous experiences with animation films. This would mean that I’d have to set aside a time frame of about a year and a half. But I already have some exhibition projects for 2009/2010 which also will definitely involve film, often in coordination with specific local entities.