2020, Alexander Kluge and Satoshi Fujiwara, 4 min visual essay, Commissioned by Fondazione Prada, as as part of the online programme Finite Rants, curated by Luigi Alberto Cippini and Niccolò Gravina
[Introduction by the curator]
A sublimation of intent and suppressed violence, obsessive skipping and mythomania, with no focused pray. Satoshi Fujiwara elaborates political content amassed and originally sourced from videos created by Alexander Kluge intro the vortex of mixed-media image democracy, conspiracy videos. An essay into overdosing and obsessing over collective thoughts and political figures, and overlaid black box of recent political traumas.
Fujiwara and Kluge’s visual essay Werewolves Playoffs activates experimentation that crosses the boundaries between cinema and photography. Actions of aggression, isolation and accumulation of images create a new narrative that invests the notions of time, speed and transformation. In contrast to Chris Marker's La Jetée, where the power of memory is fixed in the frame, in Fujiwara and Kluge's video essay the images are decontextualized, deconstructed and stratified to create a dark atmosphere far from the standards of traditional cinema. Their work is the result of a long-distance collaboration that sees the Japanese photographer trying to experiment with the video format for the first time, reworking original elements and films by the German director.
(Soundtrack: Francesco Tosini)