Kurt Kren

Kurt Kren is among the most significant figures in the avant-garde film movement.He is considered one of the most important proponents of the international film avant-garde and a pioneer of structural film.

He represents a radical, contentious and artistic approach.His works are characterized precision as well as an unbending devotion.
Kren developed his films from the fundamental factors of pure cinema and experimented not only with light and perception, but also with the apparatuses of film.

The peculiarity of his films are based on methods he used to create a vibrant and dynamic image language that is determined by extremely quick cuts based on scores with a serial, structural and mathematical character, multiple exposures, time lapse, blurs, manipulation of the soundtrack with scratching and drawing, resulting in a new form of image and perception, a variety of technical experiments and inventions which he has evolved over the years.

To understand these film it is not necessary to see through them but to feel and perceive them as real. The compact and artistic interweaving of the fragments of reality being expressed as well as the way they are filmed, processed and arranged can often go unrecognized even if each film is seen several times.

Kren's experimental documentaries about Viennese Actionism go beyond simple pleasentries. Collaboration with Viennese Activist Otto Muehl and Günter Brus led to a radicalization of his aesthetic and existential positions.

Kurt Kren's Leda and the Swan is one of the most densely constructed of all Kren's Aktion films and it's based on a Muehl materialaktion. The almost convulsive use of juxtaposition and the captured gesture assume an erotic sensitivity, though the action itself was primarily a gradual destruction of the erotic.
The film retains the classical motif, portraying, for most of its duration, a young woman embracing a swan.

7/64: Leda und der Schwan:


Kurt Kren: 10/65: Selbstverstummelung (Self-Mutilation)