»LANDED, 20 X«


Telemach Wiesinger - photographer, filmmaker, and collector - organises his photographic work around themes that, for a certain time, capture his interest. A series based on the most extreme Western points along the European coast led to his »FINISTERRAE« (land's end) project; portraits of contemporary composers and musicians built up to the »Heads of Music«; and a collection of shoots from air planes created »Wings«, an eerie spectacle with endless horizons. »Landed 20x« joins these collections of the forever curious and searching spirit of Wiesinger.

On the road a lot because of his photographic work, Telemach Wiesinger decided to take a small reel of 16 mm film on each of his trips around the world between September 1999 and September 2000. In every country, he carefully selected a location and his contributors (not to say performers!) and captured a scene of 2 minutes and 45 seconds each. With his colleague, filmmaker and cutter Wolfgang Lehmann, he chose 20 episodes from this material and combined them in an imaginary space.

Rather than to document one trip, one town or one country, »Landed 20x« creates the impression of a travel journey, allowing a glimpse through the eyes of this traveller. The 60-minute film shows the aesthetic experience of the film's author, photographer Telemach Wiesinger, and tells its story through the subjects and objects of his choice.

The American artist Mario M. Mueller compared this filmed poem to the Japanese verses of the »Haiku«, and contributed his »Orion series«. In their own way, his key sculptures reflect something of Wiesinger's puzzling play with locations, objects and characters. »The world is a system of signs«, Wiesinger says, »you have the freedom to see what you want, and you can solve the puzzle, but only for yourself«.

»Landed 20x« is about a space that is likely to be somewhere in 'nowhere land', without trying to sell something. Not an entertaining story for the cinema, not a life experience, nor a fashion. This experimental film doesn't take a political stand or address a social question either. This poem of pictures creates an imaginative emptiness for memories and thoughts - of its author, as well as of the audience. It is the sketch for a picture garden in which each one of us is free to indulge in a daydream within Wiesinger's imaginary world, our personal associations freed up by his precise timings and set order.

Leonard Wolf and S. Dedalus (English version by Claudia Wiesinger)


German premiere: Stuttgarter Filmwinter, 2002, Stuttgart, D

Experimental film »LANDED 20X«, Germany 2001, 16mm, b&w, 60 min
(version with 20 episodes)

Experimental film »LANDED«, Germany 2003, 16mm, b&w, 50 min
(version with 16 episodes)