The exigencies of living and working miles from the mainstream can prevent even the most noteworthy artists from achieving the kind of renown their work would seem to warrant. This has been the unfortunate fate of the late Austrian filmmaker Kurt Kren (1929–1998), whose films predate and predict many of the strategies of present-day radical art. In one aspect of his career — documenting the work of some of his wilder associates in the Austrian avant-garde — he arguably helped prepare us for groups like Survival Research Laboratories, body outlaws, and modern primitives — gay, straight, and all other variants.
Called the “father of postwar European avant-garde cinema” and regarded in some circles as the continental equivalent of America’s Stan Brakhage, Kren was an unlikely pioneer. A bank cashier by trade and by all accounts rather elfin, charming, and unassuming in manner, Kren began making experimental short films in 8mm in the early 1950s, moving up to 16mm in 1957. His subjects were everyday objects — walls, trees, people — but manipulated according to amusingly elaborate diagrams and charts that showed a sensibility both rigorous and whimsical. The effect in one of his earliest official works, 4/61: Walls, Positive and Negative, is hypnotic; as the title implies, it’s a series of strobe-rapid shots of walls, alternating in hard rhythms to induce a kind of dream state in the viewer.
-- Gary Morris (source)
31/75: Asyl / Asylum (1975) 16mm colour silent
32/76 An W+B (1976) 16mm colour silent
