Covid-19 project grant awarded to Kollektiv F.A.T.

News from the Institute

For their project submission “Untitled [Krenek],” the Kollektiv F.A.T. received this year’s Covid-19 project grant of the Ernst Krenek Institute Private Foundation.

Within the framework of the project, an audiovisual composition is to be made, which approaches in a compositional and poetic manner the music and person of Ernst Krenek. While the acoustic part of the project reflects upon the unusual stylistic variety of Krenek’s compositions, in the visual part the homelessness perceived in Krenek’s biography is the main focus. Inspired by the idiosyncratic tonal aesthetic of Krenek’s electro-acoustic works, excerpts from his music are to be formed into an eclectic stylistic structure of samples and newly composed passages. At the same time, video recordings and photos of Krenek will be combined together with image material of his biographical environment in a similarly eclectic visual texture. The characteristic intermediate positions in the composer’s biography and music are thus combined and create an intuitive psychological portrait of Ernst Krenek.

Kollektiv F.A.T.
The Kollektiv F.A.T. (Form Art and Time), founded by Magdalena Salner and Manuel Baumer, performs in the area of time-based art and makes use of various artistic disciplines. The focus is on the understanding of time art as such. Contrary to conventional intermedial projects, F.A.T. is not interested in the interaction of different media and art forms, but rather concentrates on their common essence: the arrangement of artistic material in time.

Magdalena Salner

Magdalena Salner’s main artistic area is the moving image. Her particular interest lies in the fashioning of form in time. Rhythm and tempo play a just as important role for that which is depicted as the image composition and the camera work. In her works, she occupies herself intensively with the conflict between meaning and power that is inherent in the picture, and the actual emptiness of these separately. With the thus created works, she challenges the viewer to question his/her usual view of moving images. Thereby, the maelstrom-like aesthetic and the alienation of the image material are essential parts of the whole. Her works range from experimental short films, room-filling video installations, to experimental 3D films and music videos.

Manuel Baumer

Manuel Baumer’s activity is informed by the continuous oscillation between muicological and compositional practice. Thereby, the music of the New York School forms an aesthetic focus. Manuel Baumer’s instrumental compositions are characterized by the endeavor to logically further develop the aesthetic concepts of Morton Feldmann and to transfer them to the contemporary circumstances. In addition to classically notated instrumental compositions, he also occupies himself, under the pseudonym MandelBaum, with the combination of art music and hip-hop-like sampling techniques.