The Making Of



In preparation for this film we have studied oodles of books and writings by Hermann Nitsch, to understand his philosophy. From that we came up with 20 pages of a concentrate of original „Nitsch-statements“, which we then composed in a narrative way.
No sentence should be altered, to perpetuate the spirit auf the author. Every collected sentence fought for its life, and that more painful was the procedure of elimination until in the end about 2 pages of text remaind. With some sentence we had a feeling of sacrifice - but it was done for the sake of aconsistent whole, which crystallised in a disputation lasting for weeks to the now very clear text.

After that we looked in numerous Nitsch-Videos for the one, which was able to transport this compression in the best manner. Disappointed we had to realise, that we could not find any recording, which could precisely outline Nitsch’s essence in such way, that it correspondeds to our aesthetic understandig.
So it was tried for many weeks to get hold of this Nitsch-power. At last we decided for a similar filmic concentration, which we had adopted for the text:

During the 5 days of the 56th Malaktion in Mistelbach we took about 16.000 single pictures from 7 meters height. We selected about 1500, which presented the essence of the action best, in a work lasting for weeks.
After that in a work lasting for some months every picture was cut electronically, was cleaned from the distracting, the redundant and unnecessary. And since an action, which is well attended, causes disturbances again and again, due to flashes or people walking through the scene, the major part of the images had to be made a collage of many other pictures.
What we did not change intentionally is the breathing of the pictures, which one becomes aware of after some time. It arises from the sunlight, flowing in through the fanlights and being modulated due to clouds again and again, as well as from the movements of the cameraman in dizzy 7 meters height, which became apparent during 8 hours of recording time in jerks now and then despite of the massive connection with the filigree scaffold.

We also searched for the appropriate voices. These have been named by Nitsch himself without any hesitation in one first breath, which argues for a special connection. If one hears the voices of Maria Graff and Giuseppe Zevola, one feels this direct relatedness, which supports this special friendship of these three people.

At last we highlighted the whole film with music, whereas we - almost at the end of the work - dropped Beethoven’s 9th symphony, which was our first choice. It is good, but Beethoven just did not know anything about Nitsch, and that is why the dialogue between music and image wandered off again and again.
One statement of Nitsch -“I found no counterpart for my work in the existing music, which is why I had to create it myself”- was the basis of our decision to take music from his compositions.
“Die Ägyptische”, which premiered at the time of the 56th painting action, sets the pictures to music in exactly the way we have imagined. And the long and very deep dialoge with the conductor Peter Jan Marthé clarified our selection and led to a compression of the almost two hour symphony to the video which lasts 20 minutes.

Together with the lyrics of the narrators the music lets the pictures come to life, and text, narrators, pictures and music seem to inspire each other.
The video’s text is spoken in german and italian, partly alternately, partly simultaneously. This alternation mirrors like Nitsch’s work (music, Malaktion, OMT) the bipolarity/duality of man. Also in the music the banal melody breaks in a dialogic way the immemorial magic of the long and breathing tones, which are creatures themselves.

Heard and viewed only skin-deep every spoken and musical single part is meaningful and reflects only the two sides of a totality. But the attentive viewer will be aware of “something missing”, he has to bring himself to think deeper. Not until then the work begins to communicate, to live ...
Like Marthé, who welcomed us with a statement from the film Matrix, “EITHER YOU GET IN, OR YOU GET OUT”, we do not want to anticipate this decision from the viewer by an obtrusive simplicity!
It became -for us- an acoustic and visual adventure, that rewarded our work at last, and that made forget the effort, exhaustion, desperation and anger.

We may say with firm conviction, that we grew with this work as we have seldom done. Nevertheless partly it has been an adventure, which threatened to drown us. About 1500 hours of work are not only a big challenge to hold out until the end, they are also enormously shaping. For this we are grateful, since what we have found compensates us lavishly for what we have given!