Matter out of Place

At one point in Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s documentary, a hard cut leads from the Swiss mountains to a paradise island atoll. The connection here is always garbage. The image of a truck full of litter hanging from a gondola being transported down the mountain still reverberates in the mind; in the next moment, even the turquoise Maldivian idyll proves to be a mirage. Without the work of garbage collectors, one would be relaxing on the beach next to plastic bottles. But the trash is just taken to the nearest island and burned there with fatal consequences. MATTER OUT OF PLACE is built entirely of such miniatures of garbage disposal, making it a no less troubling follow-up to ERDE, in which Geyrhalter turned his attention to the malformations of the Anthropocene. The difference this time is that he focuses on the process of garbage removal (almost) without words: the circular structure of the film, in which trash is collected, transported, separated and crushed globally at great expense, creates the impression that it basically never really disappears. Geyrhalter’s eye for the downright absurd efforts of humans is tinged with irony. Divers making garbage in bags rise like jellyfish – even poetic images like this hardly distract from the impossibility of the task. (Dominik Kamalzadeh)

In the presence of Nikolaus Geyrhalter and members of the team.
There will be a filmtalk with ÖGS-interpreting on the 24th of October at 6 pm.

Nikolaus Geyrhalter: ANGESCHWEMMT (1994), DAS JAHR NACH DAYTON (1997), PRIPYAT (1999), ELSEWHERE (2001), TEMELIN. EIN DORF IN SÜDBÖHMEN (2002, TV), UNSER TÄGLICH BROT (2005), 7915 KM (2008), ALLENTSTEIG (2010), ABENDLAND (2011), DONAUSPITAL (2012, TV), ÜBER DIE JAHRE (2015), HOMO SAPIENS (2016), DIE BAULICHE MASSNAHME (2018), ERDE (2019)