Design as a political act? In this animated collage, a contemporary advertising graphic designer explores the uncompromising work of the photomontage pioneer and anti-fascist John Heartfield.
The graphic designer Stefanie is in a creative crisis. Boring advertising assignments and a boss who does not value her work. On a visit to a museum, she is magically attracted by the satirical photomontages of the world-famous colleague and Nazi opponent John Heartfield. Then the miracle happens. She ends up in his studio, where she finally picks up scissors and paper again. An adventurous journey through Heartfield's extraordinary life 100 years ago begins.
The breasts are in place, the feathers are smoothed, off to the date! Her daughter does not comprehend the ritual of desire yet … Erotically crude, with pointed beaks in the conflicts.
Željko is the head of the union at the Gredelj railway car factory. His deputy, Mladen, committed suicide after a large public protests and clashes within the union. Željko is torn between the guilt he feels because of Mladen's death and the expectation of the workers to lead a strike.
In Jirkuff's animation, based on a story by Ilse Aichinger (1921–2016), the parts of a house develop a life of their own. Along with the handrail and the wallpaper, even the white drawing surfaces are affected: Jirkuff's charcoal strokes and the coal dust from Aichinger's text colour them grey (after all, coal is stored in the cellar where the narrating voice ultimately ends up). Here, as previously in Vermessung der Distanz (2019), Susi Jirkuff's interest is not only in the spatiality of the building but also in the (non-) behaviour of fellow humans. No one asks: “Didn't you live next door to us just yesterday?”
The story appeared in 1955 in Stillere Heimat, the literary yearbook of the city of Linz. Aichinger had survived the era of national socialist terror in an apartment near the Vienna Gestapo headquarters. The yearned end of the war did not promise liberation – the same people were sitting in the offices; they talked the same and acted the same. The housing office told the severely depleted family whose close family members had been murdered, a sister and an aunt able to flee to England: “Sleep in hammocks.” Who really cared about such matters back then? And who's really concerned about the living situation of endangered people nowadays? (Andreas Dittrich)
DOK Industry is realised with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media upon a Decision of the German Bundestag.