Solweig von Kleist

In co-operation with Animateka International Animation Film Festival
7th Edition, www.animateka.si

6 - 12 December 2010,
Moderna galerija / Museum of Modern Art - Mala galerija
Friday, 10 December at 21.30

The Dragon, in situ performance
The Dragon Constellation

What do the City of London, the center of the financial world, and the city of Ljubljana have in common?
It's the dragons - guarding bridges and watching treasures.

But dragons are fought by the Greek hero Jason, St. Georges and the archangel Michael in the Apocalypse of Johannes. In this initial "Chaoskampf" the good forces defeat the satanic dragon.

In my live animation piece "Chaos" a man is running up
and down on a rolling path that writes the word "chaos".
Now the time has come for him to stop and face the monster?

For 7 years, I have attempted to take a second look
at animation as an art form:
Constructing a picture, then breaking it up,
unveiling invisible movements and secret messages
that may hide under static surfaces.

The spectator who takes the time to connect the dots
is in for some surprise:
"Ordo ab Chao"- Order out of Chaos?

Solweig von Kleist, November 2010

Solweig von Kleist ( France/Germany) was born in Würzburg, Germany. Already while studying at Berlin Hochschule der Künste, she expressed her interest in visual arts and cinematography. She continued her studies in painting and experimental film at California Institute of the Arts. Since 1985 she has been living in France, pursuing both visual arts (painting, sculpture, installations and performance) and animated film successfully. Her style in painting is notably expressionist, which also shows in her animated films. Solweig von Kleist keeps exploring and experimenting with topics of movement, space and time. Due to her interest in animation as the art of moving images, she began searching for new ways of screening animated films outside cinemas. While exploring various animation techniques, she has made three animated films: Criminal Tango (1985, scratch animation); Panta Rhei - Everything Flows (1992, drawing on paper); Romance Of The Heart (1996, cel animation). She is currently working on the preparation for her new animation project Kill Tina.
Recently, Solweig von Kleist used paintings, drawings and sculptures containing "invisible films" to make several cinematographic performances and installations, which were shown in France, Japan and Taiwan. She uses animation as a way to explore the depth of seemingly static images, which provides them with unexpected and unusual meanings.