Selbstbildnis als Akt; Studie Nr.2 / Image of myself as act; Study No.2A film by Wolfgang Lehmann (7 min., 42, b/w & colour, 16mm, Germany 2002-03)

I love signs of transience such as patina, scratches and age; they are traces of history and existence in pictures. They are signals for irreversible time. There are no longer any negatives of the original footage because all the material was combined to form a whole during editing. The images on the screen are the result of the extremely short sequences of shots, as a rule in two or three frames. The >smudge< is anything but a reduction of the image; on the contrary, as a result the pictures gain a degree of diversity and richness. The marks where the film is spliced was something that excited me even in the >classics< of film history, and here this has been taken consciously to the extreme by me. What interests me is not the analysis of the material but rather the very conscious way of dealing with the aesthetics of it. The nakedness of the body is not the most essential aspect of the film. Nakedness is something natural, no more and no less. The desire to work with material, the rhythm of the images, the editing and assembling of the pictures, the light and the colours - these are the real self-portrait because it is in these that I find my passion for creating. - Wolfgang Lehmann