Info
When the Peonies bloom, 2024
The Past manifesting in the Present, 2024
All my Summers, 2024
A Summer that never happened, 2023
Commissions
Video (Color, Sound)
24‘
2024
Mirjam Reiter’s film reminds us that we tell stories in order to survive. The forms these stories take have always been a matter of negotiation. »All My Summers« features summery hills filmed against the light, two sisters, abandoned interiors, car rides, a thunderstorm. Archive images. Blocks of black. Light patterns in the city, water. The voice of a young woman tells of her departure from the countryside, against the familial backdrop of a disappearing rural world. The narrative sinks heavily under the luminous images.
Mirjam Reiter made a film at the age of fourteen; today, she reflects on the images of that time and the texture of her memory. For her, creating images and forms of memory is less about “doing something great” than about arriving at a process of endless transformation. Perhaps her departure began long before she actually left, when the first experiment with her own pictures caused great dissatisfaction. The problem was not the result, but rather her attempt: “Why did I think I could just do it?” Appalled, the fourteen-year-old abandons her plan; this experience is followed by a fade to black—a disappearance, a departure.
All My Summers tells of the desire to leave everything behind and at the same time to be “there”: in the present, in one’s own subjectivity. To create a “summer” that can be visited again and again across time and space, because things there seem to be what they feel like. “This summer was the best that I can remember,” she says toward the end. “Nothing special happened. But I felt really there. I was present, in my body and in space.” Feeling “really there” as a personal necessity and social goal: The desire not to be confined is often the starting point for images, spaces, and stories in order to survive. “It has also been the first summer again of just filming. Out of curiosity more than fear. Often paid close attention to what is quickly changing and enjoying it. The sound of wind in the trees. Light changing. Water flowing.” When you give yourself to places, Rebecca Solnit once wrote, they give you yourself back.
Text by Lina Leonore Morawetz