Artist Statement

Film 1973, German OV with English Subtitles. Return of the Pilots theme

Director Regie Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Introduction and Discussion Timothy Druckrey

At the Institute of Cybernetics and Future Research, scientists created an artificial world – a counterfeit of a presumed ‘real’ one. After the sudden death of the institute’s director his successor, Fred Stiller, seems to meet the same fate as he begins to suspect that the reality he is living in is itself a simulation. This largely unknown film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder is an unsettling phantasmagoria on the anxiety of the use and misuse of computer modelling as a substitute for reality. Even 37 years after its initial screening on German television in 1973, the film displays an advanced vision of a present in which economic and social life have little material value – but rather, the film is engaged in new constant speculations about the status of reality – or it’s inevitable simulation.

After the screening of the film’s two parts Timothy Druckrey will lead a discussion on the film’s themes and provide background information about its production.

• Rainer Werner Fassbinder [1945 – 1982] was a West German filmmaker, actor, playwright, theatre director, composer, cinematographer, editor, and essayist. He is widely regarded as a prominent figure and catalyst of the New German Cinema movement.   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainer_Werner_Fassbinder
• Timothy Druckrey  Independent curator, writer, and editor. Has taught in graduate programmes at the International Center of Photography, the School of Visual Arts, and the Center of Creative Imaging in NY, USA. Lectures internationally about the social impact of electronic media, the transformation of representation, and communication in interactive and networked environments.  subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors3/druckreybio.html

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