For more than six years, the SCHIRN has served as a forum for national and international filmmakers and video artists. Under the heading Double Feature, the latter present a work from their own oeuvre, followed by their favorite film. Already, films and videos by more than 50 guests have been shown. Double Feature is designed as a platform for various trends and forms of expression in film and video production which, with the dawn of digitization if not before, is now considered an art form in its own right. On the last Monday of every month and in conversation with the curators Katharina Dohm, Matthias Ulrich and guest curators, the invited artists provide extensive insight into their creative work, especially their interest in film. In 2018 the audience can look forward to contributions from Mikhail Kari­kis, Pedro Bara­teiro and Mario Pfei­fer among others. 

Aleksandar Radan’s film pieces are based on modifications of existing computer games, a practice dubbed “modding”. Radan’s focus lies on the avatars he comes across in computer games: He modifies these and combines them with additional, found footage. The Offenbach-born artist is screening his film “This water gives back no image,” which won the prize for the best experimental film at the international Lago Film Fest in 2018.

Gerard Byrne analyzes the construction of images, how they are conveyed, and how collective moments are created. His pieces are often based on photographic material gleaned from magazines from the 1960s through to the 1980s, which assert a new presence of their own in his filmic and photographic realizations. Byrne’s film “In Our Time” (2017), which was on view at Skulptur Projekte in Munster, evidently does not take place in the current world despite being created using cutting edge film technology.

Damir Očko’s works “Dicta I” and “Dicta II” revolve around the complexity of language. “Dicta I” is based on Bertolt Brecht’s autobiographical work “Fünf Schwierigkeiten beim Schreiben der Wahrheit” (Five Difficulties in Writing the Truth), which he wrote in exile having fled the Nazi regime. “Dicta II” is constructed around a number of “safe words” – code words intended to ensure sexual practices are immediately discontinued.

Shen Xin’s film “Warm Spell” takes a sensitive, sensual approach to the economic, ecological and cultural changes currently being experienced in the Thai island of Ko Yao Yai. Periods of drought and flooding, investors and migrant workers, tourists from Europe and Asia are currently changing the life there. Taking documentary material as her starting point, Shen Xin weaves a dreamy, surrealist tale about a ghostly presence on the island which combines the experiences of local protagonists with intimate, personal impressions of a journey.