Werner Nekes Day

 

‘Werner Nekes was born in 1944 in Erfurt and studied linguistics and psychology in Freiburg. He then went to Bonn in 1964 where he was a head of the University Film Club and later chairman of the FIAG. He developed friendships with film directors, sculptors and painters. These included Dore 0., his companion and collaborator since 1967.

‘He began painting in 1965 with diverse materials and objects.

‘He started his practice of film with 8mm and went on with 16mm. He decided to free the film from narration and psychology and organized his films according to temporal units and structural systems.

‘In spring 1967, his films were rejected by the Kurzfilmtage of Oberhausen. Thus, Nekes organized a counter-event.

‘The same year in November, he came to Hamburg with Dore 0., whom he married the following month. He was a co-founder of the Hamburg cooperative of filmmakers and was a co-organizer of the « Hamburger Filmschau » in 1967. From 1973, he travelled all over the world to make seminars about film theory and retrospectives. He moved to Mülheim an der Ruhr in summer 1978.

‘He co-founded the Filmbüro NW in 1980 and the ICNC (International Center for New Cinema) in Riga in 1988.

His work was shown at major international museums and festivals, including The Museum of Modern Art New York, or the Kassel Dokumenta.

‘He was also a professor: from 1969 to 1972 and 2004 to 2006 at the Academy of Fine Arts (Hochschule für Bildende Künste) in Hamburg, from 1981 to 1982 at Wuppertal University, from 1982 to 1984 at the Kunsthochschule Offenbach, and, from 1990-96 at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne.

‘Furthermore, Nekes compiled one of the most important private collections of artefacts documenting 500 years of pre-cinematographic experiments as well as developments in the early history of film, focusing on spatial and temporal principles of representation.

‘Nekes died unexpectedly at the age of 72 in January, 2017.’ — Ubuweb

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Video: Portrait: Werner Nekes @ ARTE
The Werner Nekes Collection
Whatever happens between the pictures: a lecture by Werner Nekes
Werner Nekes @ MUBI
WERNER NEKES ́ ULIISSES: LITERARY CITATIONS BETWEEN EYE AND BRAIN IN THE CINEMA OF LIGHT-ERATURE
Light Movement 3: Werner Nekes
Montage horizontal et montage vertical chez Werner Nekes
RUB YOUR EYES. From the Werner Nekes Collection
DVD: L’ENCYCLOPÉDIE DES ILLUSIONS VISUELLES PAR WERNER NEKES.
Schwellenfilm
Werner Nekes interviewed (in German)
Podcast: Legendärer Filmkünstler und Sammler: Zum Tod von Werner Nekes

 

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Extras

W. Nekes Interview

Werner Nekas (1982) by Gérard Courant

Werner Nekes talk about and shows optical devices from his renowned collection.

Exprmntl: Werner Nekes

werner nekes estampas eróticas antiguas

 

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Werner Nekes: A Pre-Cinematic Obsession
from AnOther Magazine

 

‘Magic lanterns, zoetropes and perspective boxes, carved handles that cast shadows of historical silhouettes, games of anamorphosis where distorted scenes are brought into definition with the help of a special mirror or lens… In Werner Nekes’s home, one enters a world of Cartesian uncertainty where everything seems to be, or harbors, an illusion until proven otherwise.

‘I met Nekes in 2001 at a Magic Lantern Society convention in Birmingham, where he stood out in his black turtleneck and stern moustache. Over the years we fitfully stayed in touch, and in 2004 I went to Eyes, Lies and Illusions, an exhibition at the Hayward that comprised hundreds of items from his collection, probably the largest of pre-cinematic devices in the world. But my dream was always to see it in situ.

‘Nekes’s home is situated on a motorway in the small town of Mülheim an der Ruhr. He leads me down a steep flight of stairs, through a room crammed with film stock and video cassettes, and then into his vast compendium of marvels from the Renaissance onwards. The first he shows me is William Cheselden’s Osteographia, an anatomical tome from 1733 displaying life-size representations of bones. Drawn with the help of a camera obscura, many of the plates depict skeletons in animated poses. As with most objects in Nekes’s collection, it’s this play between interiority and exteriority, at work in both magic and science, that’s part of the wonder.

‘He asks me what I’d like to see next. I look around, overwhelmed, with the sense that dozens of mechanical eyes stare back at me. I decide to pursue my own interest, magic lanterns. A large wooden one from Germany is the oldest in the collection, while his favourite is a Diableries brass lantern from around 1880. It is too fragile to handle – its images are hand painted on rhodoid and turn on a spool. Werner found it at auction in France – “Proust must have had such a lantern” – and claims only five were ever made.

‘Magic lanterns project images; perspective boxes keep theirs within. These little theatres of enigmatic depths often showed catastrophes such as the earthquake of Lisbon, and there’s a sense of a natural force, barely contained, bursting out of them.

‘So, where did it all begin? With thaumatropes, he smiles. In 1975, when Nekes was in Bilbao screening his films, he walked into a magic shop and asked the owner whether he had any “images that turn quickly”. The man brought out a handful of thaumatropes. These toys work on the principle of the afterimage and persistence of vision. Via a twirling motion, two sides of a painted disc merge optically, fusing into one: a parrot + an empty cage = an encaged bird; a woman in bed + a perching imp = an incubus. Although Nekes gave away his first thaumatropes to friends, something was triggered and he embarked on his passionate exploration.

‘Since my arrival, I’ve been aware of a sinister profile on a shelf, another eye. Nekes tells me to turn it fully around. A grimacing face comes into view, with a painted red mouth, a cold blue gem of an eye, a dangling earring. But it’s actually an ear from whalebone, he says, from around 1600, found at auction in Germany.

‘Of the value of his collection, Nekes says: “It has the grammar of everything that is possible.” I think back on Cheselden – bones form our own grammar, our verbs, subjects, prepositions, they dictate how we move through the world. Somehow Cheselden’s book, I realise, is emblematic of Nekes’ collection – for everything, on shelf or page, can be animated – and everywhere, there are reminders of mortality, haunting and beautiful memento mori.’ — Chloe Aridjis

 

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12 of Werner Nekes’ 44 films

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Johnny Flash (1986)
‘Experimental filmmaker Werner Nekes describes in this, his first comedy the extraordinary career of the pop king of the Ruhr, „Johnny Flash“. This obstinate offspring of the Potzkothen family succeeds in becoming, thanks to the unflagging support of his mother, his manager and „that girl at Music Satellite“ a celebrated pop star. In the final sequence of this satire on show business and mother-son-love, Johnny and his mama wander off into an uncertain horizon, just as Charlie Chaplin once did at the end of his films …’ — Re: Voir

the entire film

 

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Film Before Film (1986)
‘An exhilarating and amusing encyclopedic look at the “prehistory” of cinema. Werner Nekes charts the fascination with moving pictures which led to the birth of film, covering shadow plays, peep shows, flip books, flicks, magic lanterns, lithopanes, panoramic, scrolls, colorful forms of early animation, and numerous other historical artiffices. Working with these formats, early “producers” created melodramas, comedies, — as well as lots of pornography — anticipating most of the forms known today. Nekes probes these colorful toys and inventions in a rich and rewarding optical experience. Film Before Film is a bewildering assault of exotic (and sometimes erotic) images and illusions.’ — Kino Lorber

the entire film

 

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Uliisses (1982)
‘The film is a Homeric journey through the history of cinema. Its theme is based on the mythological Odysseus of Homer, the Ulysses of James Joyce, and the synthetic figure, Telemach/Phil, from the 24-hour-long piece «The Warp,» by Neil Oram. Werner Nekes combines these three figures, and he shows their stories within the history of «lighterature,» writing with light = film. His central theme, however, is visual language in of itself: Odysseus/Bloom is transformed into Uli the Photographer, Penelope/Molly into his model, and Telemach/Stephen into Phil, who begins his «Telemachia». The connecting of their three lives occurs during the course of a single day, in September of 1980, in Germany’s industrial Ruhrgebiet region, preceding the elections in the Federal Republic.’ — medienkunstnetz

Excerpt

Watch another excerpt here

 

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w/ Dore O Beuys (1981)
‘Ostensibly, and as the title should hopefully have suggested, Beuys is a documentary on the German artist Joseph Beuys, a renowned figure in modern/contemporary art circles and one recently treated to a major retrospective at Tate Modern. This may put the film in the same category as, for example, Clouzot’s La Mystère Picasso, Rivers and Tides (on Andy Goldsworthy) or Right Out of History (on Judy Chicago), yet for each of their respective qualities these works offer essentially conventional records of their subjects. Beuys on the other hand takes a more conceptual approach and as a result perhaps shares a closer kinship with Gilbert and George’s contemporaneous feature The World of Gilbert and George. Here we find Beuys effectively given free rein – his is the only voice, indeed only sound, which we hear; he is the only person to appear onscreen, and in a single take at that; and even the opening credits seem unnaturally hasty in their efforts to move out of his way, having been written directly onto the celluloid and over in seconds – but crucially he doesn’t figure in the expected manner. Rather we find him facing a wall, with his back to the camera and placed in a spotlight so that he becomes almost a silhouette. Indeed, all we see are the hands behind his back and his equally stationary right ear, the rest of his body having been engulfed by a hat and sizeable coat. Under such circumstances he resembles nothing more than a big screen gangster, one in a firing line perhaps or an informant trapped in an intense spotlight. Moreover, the décor seem to match such an interpretation: the walls are painted white and are completely bare save for some electrical fittings which presumably no longer work; apart from Beuys himself the only other visible object is a radiator of standard persuasion. All told it appears that we’re in either a disused factory or some abandoned warehouse – either way it’s a stark environment, but also one teeming with atmosphere.’ — Cinema of the World

the entire film

 

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Hynningen (1973)
‘Hynningen (Swedish for ‘honey roof’) begins with long multiple exposures of a landscape with a clearing, opening up to the horizon. In the middle of the clearing there is a simple log cabin of the type characteristic of Northern Europe or Quebec. There are actors a man and a woman – at the window, at the doorway, strolling in the grass, doubled or even tripled by multiple exposure. Traces they have left at different moments of the day and in the changing light appear as gentle phantoms. If our varying perceptions would outlast changes in location we would experience a strong sense of continuity and of repetition. This visual counterpart to the imperfect tense in grammar is amplified by three high tones on a background of sinus curves. These gradually reach a higher pitch. But this isolated house, filmed in the almost silent density of a Baudelarian ‘Afternoon without end’, that seems as if made to accommodate peace and meditation, does it not attain a sudden, bewildering presence? If it is true that the term ‘to be’ originally means ‘to live’ and ‘to unfold’ but also ‘to dwell’, taking into account both Indo-European roots (es, bhû) as well as the Germanic ‘wes’, is one not, on seeing this dwelling place, invariably reminded of what Heidegger said about Man as ‘the keeper of his being’? Is this honey roof not the place of sheltered existence? No matter what Nekes himself thinks about his films and no matter how dominant the primacy of technique and structure, has he not with DIWAN begun erecting a metaphysical oeuvre, in which unto the cinema is bestowed the task of concealing and revealing existence as such? This is precisely the purpose that according to Heidegger constitutes Man’s oppressive privilege, Man who is subjected to the painful experience of boredom and of Angst. The end of the film is as cheerful as it is mysterious: we are led into the house with the honey roof. In front of a window, open as in the paintings of Magritte, the inhabitants walk, in multiple exposure, naked and silent…’ — L’Art Vivant

the entire film

 

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Makimono (1974)
‘The title refers to Japanese landscape painting on rolls. Furthermore it indicates the film’s theme, the balance of colors (blurred tones of blue, green and grey) and the type of montage that gives priority to continuity of development rather than to disruption and contrast. This continuity is achieved by dissolvings and double exposures and by extremely long pans. The rhythm accelerates: a meditation on landscape, which unfolds before the eye or is visually paced out, gives way to fluidity and pure motion, to a feeling of dizziness, the result of two contrasting camera movements. The world resembles a reflection in the water; then, however, rapid montage creates a calligraphy consisting of the quick and sharp black strokes of a Hartung painting, until one finally arrives at the glittering simplicity of an early movie where each frame still retains the weight of its individual tracks, of earth and of the world. Anthony Moore’s Soundtrack strikingly agrees with the images presented and by means of three consecutive modulations bestows unto them the structure of a concerto.’ — Helmuth Fenster, LArt Vivant

Excerpt

 

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Diwan (1974)
‘Diwan, a lyric anthology, an outdoor movie with people. With people living in the surrounding precious and very beautifully photographed nature, are neither more nor less than one part of it. What Nekes manages there with landscape, as a cunning and quote many fine artist in a medium that runs in time, as he defeated the time changed, by themselves for change of scenery uses, as it interferes with the laws of chronology through the rewind ability of the camera or destroyed, which is a compelling and highly aesthetic experimental company .(…)’ — Experimental Cinema

Excerpt

 

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T-WO-MEN (1972)
‘The film is divided into five parts differing in pictorial and musical structure. The plot, two women and their love for one another, is of secondary importance. An ingenious combination of stereoscopic images and montage of individual pictures make new qualities of perception accessible to the viewer. In the final part of the love scenes pictorial sequences and music build up to a delirious rhythm.’ — ReVoir

Excerpt

 

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w/ Dore O Abbandono (1966 – 1970)
‘Abbandono is composed of material from four years’ work. Maybe this is the reason why the film is one of Werner Nekes’ most expressive and most replete with imagery. ‘For and with Dore O.’ – the quality of the pictures is more lyrical and more vivid than usual. Their composition however typically corresponds to his other films in the manner in which they recur. We see Dore running in a snowscape, dissolving into white, a view of red shingled roofs, falling snow; a corridor of passage, filmed in green monochrome and in such a way that the objects defining it are visible only in parts. Dore walks down the corridor and Werner sometimes too. The sound is among the best that Anthony Moore has created; a sequence of gently undulating, poignant tones that rise to a sharply sounding crescendo and then die away”.’ — Tony Reif

the entire film

 

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Ach, wie gut, daß niemand weiß (1967)

Trailer

 

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Gurtrug N°1 (1967)
‘I. Demonstration of divergent movements of 26 people and two horses.
II. Periodic interruption by a second filmic plane.
III. A segment of music repeated in a row.’ — Letterboxd

the entirety

 

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Tom Doyle and Eva Hesse: A Silent Movie (1965)
‘In 1965, Nekes made his first experimental films at the same time he met the painter Dore O., whom he followed to Hamburg in 1967 and married. This clip is from Nekes’ short film documenting Eva Hesse and her husband Tom Doyle at Doyle’s exhibition at the Scheidt Family home in Kettwig. This meeting would begin a long lasting friendship between Nekes and Hesse and eventually led to Nekes’ acquisition of key early works by the artist.’ — Christies

Watch an excerpt here

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!!! Well, let’s see … I was in Vienna and not doing event related stuff just basically for one not entirely full day, so I didn’t see a lot. I spent a bit of time at the really, really charming old amusement park, Prater. None of the rides were working when I was there, but it looked extremely fun. The center of the city looks kind of like what I imagined — elegant, kind of classy old buildings, very ‘Germanic’ looking. The city seemed pretty nice in general, hospitable. The people I dealt with there were all really cool and kind and stuff. It seemed good. What part of the city will you guys be living in? As soon as love gets ‘You Spin Me Round’ out of your head I’d ask him to get Guided by Voices’s ‘Face Eraser’ out of its loop in mine, even though I do love the song. Enough is enough though. How were your last couple of days? ** A, I think my only photos of that ex- are in LA and polaroid-only. It was only me in Vienna, but it was good. Zac is just back in Paris, and I’ll see him in the next couple of days, and presumably he will have the ARC with him when I do, but I will let you know. Wow, about the trigger warning. So it goes these days. I never got one of those, but I don’t think my publishers thought my books would reach normal people. And I guess they didn’t. ** Misanthrope, Hey, G. Yeah, thanks, it is cool that ‘I Wished’ is in German, and my publisher there makes such pretty looking books. And the event was sold out, so I guess I have fans there, which was surprising and obviously very nice. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Sounds super interesting: the trilogy. Breathing life/fire into a staid genre is an interesting goal, for sure. That was my idea back when I wanted to make a porn film, but it never happened, probably because I realised how hard that would be. ‘Hard’, ha ha. ** Kettering, Hi. Thanks, the trip was quite good. No, I didn’t get to the cemetery yet. I overestimated my free time. But I’m due to go visit a friend who lives right next to it imminently, so that’s in the cards. Curious if people have left things on Guyotat’s grave and what they would be, if so. The time I saw Sartre’s grave people had put metro tickets all over it for reasons unknown. ** Cody Goodnight, Hi, Cody. I’m decent, and you? They just showed ‘Polyester’ here with JW in person. Did they hand out the Odorama cards at your screening? Wait, you probably watched it at home. John Waters is a pal of mine, and he really is the nicest, kindest coolest guy ever. I would say my favorite John Waters film would be a tie between ‘Female Trouble’ and ‘Serial Mom’. I haven’t watched ‘Phantom of the Paradise’ in ages. I should, that’d be fun. Excellent day to you, sir. ** Bill, I don’t know that film ‘Queer Japan’. Huh. I’ll check around for a streamer or download. I remember back in the ’80s a very popular term gay guys used to talk shit about older queens was to nickname them Prunella. I think that’s only use of the word I’ve ever heard. It was fun in Vienna. And the couple cakes I ate were yum but very sweet. ** tomk, Hi, T. It was good, the trip. People seemed to really like ‘PGL’, happily. You were here? Wow. While I was gone? Sucks. A rave in a former train station … I don’t know about that. I’ll ask Zac. He goes out dancing sometimes, and he’ll probably know. Any progress on the work thing? ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Murray Head is performing in concert here soon. I didn’t know he was still extant. I guess he had a bunch of hits in France at some point. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Thank you yet again so much! Ha ha, yeah, I managed in a number of cases to replace the PhotoBucket-imprinted images with equivalents. Not in every case, obviously, but … Greatest day to you! ** Steve Erickson, I can imagine: draining. Obviously, keep treating your ankle with kid gloves. I think I’ve said this before, but the last time I saw ‘Lost Highway’ I felt like I knew exactly what could be cut out of the film to make it a masterpiece rather than a mostly amazing film with weaknesses. I, of course, don’t remember my imaginary edit anymore. ** Okay. In case you don’t know the super interesting films and general experimental film-related efforts of Werner Nekes, you have an opportunity to become at somewhat informed today. See you tomorrow.