Blue Screen #14: Sophie Watzlawick

Upon invitation by Lucile Desamory, we were delighted to welcome Sophie Watzlawick as our artist in focus for Blue Screen #14. Sophie Watzlawick is a Berlin-based artist and analogue filmmaker whose work adopts a speculative approach to the moving image, exploring how film can evoke philosophical and poetic concepts. In addition to working across image, sound and text, she is a co-founder and active member of LaborBerlin, an artist film lab that provides a collaborative and experimental space for analogue film practice.

Blue Screen #14 situated Sophie Watzlawick’s practice within a wider context of artist moving-image that decelerates film to examine sight and the act of looking in relation to the image. The selected works place a value not only what is visible in the moving image—what can be seen—but also what remains hidden or concealed. As Sophie notes in a recent interview with us in GLEAN magazine: “I think what interests me most is the trick of the moving image – I’m really touched that what you’re really seeing is a series of still images and your mind makes them move. But every single photogram can still hide something. There’s always something just behind the image.”

In dialogue to Sophie Watzlawick’s practice we showed works by: Anouk De Clercq, Esther Urlus, Margarita Maximova, Mathias Prenen and Oscar van der Put.

In the second part of the evening d’incise performed a live interlude to the film ‘où la nuit tombe, un bruit sourd, interlude illimité’ by Sophie Watzlawick, which was followed by a Q&A with the artists and the audience.

To complement each live event, we interview the featured artist, which can be viewed on the Glean Screening Room: https://glean.art/screening-room. In addition to the interview, a selected film is available to watch during the month of the event.

Blue Screen is produced by Level Five and hypernuit, with the support of FW-B (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles) and VAF (Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds).