Norbert Pfaffenbichler (born 1967, Austria) has been involved in the emergence of the Austrian abstract cinema in the mid 1990s, when a generation of artists has begun to produce radical computer and video works, combining electronic music and abstract media art. Innovative filmmaker himself alongside other now-renowned artists like Tina Frank, Lotte Schreiber, Michaela Grill,  Jürgen Moritz, SKOT, Lia, Michaela Schwentner and Billy Roisz, he also curated the major group show “Abstraction Now” at the Künstlerhaus in Vienna in 2003 presenting computer-generated “sound visions” works.

Since 2002 he has been working on his film series Notes on Film where the historical medium of film and photography is central to his analysis.

While the development of the Notes on Film – series (notes on film 01 else, CONFERENCE, INTERMEZZO, A Messenger from the Shadows, A Masque of Madness) is logical, the expansive directions it takes are baffling. Pfaffenbichler’s unique sensibility finds expression in a growing emphasis upon the comic and the uncanny, whereby his avant-garde and often structuralist approach is coupled with an ever-increasing pleasure in playful experimentation. The source material is simultaneously de- and re-constructed, with a considerable amount of Brechtian surplus value, albeit involving a specifically filmic magnetism. It is impossible to come away from a Pfaffenbichler film without an altered and enriched sense of cinema, its history and possibilities. (Christoph Huber)

Contains:01. notes on film 01 else (2002, 35mm, bw, 6 min)02. CONFERENCE (Notes on Film 05) (2011, 35mm, bw, 8 min)03. INTERMEZZO (Notes on Film 04) (2012, col, DV, 2 min)04. A Messenger from the Shadows (Notes on Film 06A/Monologue 01) (2012, DV, col & bw, 60 min)

Bonus:05. Norbert Pfaffenbichler, Lotte Schreiber 36 (2001, video, col, 2 min)

Extra: 20 pages booklet bilingual English-German