in the stranglehold of ivy

The only inhabitant of this non-place is a ghostly presence. She wanders through the corridors, appears in poses and sometimes suddenly disappears. The figure seems trapped in this labyrinth surrounded by rampant nature. With haunting glances, she raises questions about her meaning. For nature's apparent stranglehold grips not only the impenetrable architecture, but equally the embodiment of this ghostly figure. Pregnancy, as Simone de Beauvoir writes, is an "ambiguous" state of transformation. "Flooded with life," the woman possesses the child and is equally possessed by it. This trail of presences and absences - this confusion of the status of subject and object - is what the film attempts to tap into. We participate in the uncanniness of this in-between stage, the emergence of something hidden. In the hopelessness of the ghost as revenant anticipated here, the film creates its very own surreal phantasmagoria of corporeality, architecture and nature, in whose expressive images we become completely caught up like the ivy.

10-channel, 16mm, projection, silent, Installation dimensions variable, Duration approx. 22min

in the stranglehold of ivy

This film cannot be read linear in terms of time nor space.
Pregnancy is an intermediate state,
Intermediate locus.
One person is two persons,
Reclaiming space as a natural notion,
From both humans and nature itself.
No beginning no middle, no end yet to begin again.

Tobias Pils

The film installation IN THE STRANGLEHOLD OF IVY grants entry into a house that has been reclaimed by nature. A key grants access to a house sticking out of a green thicket. The arrangement of the ten 16mm loops expands the architecture of the exhibition space and also opens up the filmic space. The space functions as a heterotopic labyrinth through which a ghostly presence wanders. The figure seems trapped in this labyrinth surrounded by rampant nature. In poses and gazes, the apparition, trapped in this surreal place, raises numerous questions about its history. The embodiment of pregnancy, this state of transformation, is multiplied in the juxtaposition of the loops. Simone de Beauvoir’s “ambiguous couple” of woman and child unsettles the categories of subject and object. “Flooded with life,” the woman possesses the child and is equally possessed by it. The uncanniness lies in the indistinguishability of the self and the other, the known and the unknown. Ghosts point to a trace of absence, bridging past and present, and thus also marking the relationship between mother and child. It is this uncanny prefiguration—the emergence of something hidden—that the installation takes on in the infinity of the loop, while still maintaining a firm grip on the secrets of the house. In the hopelessness of the ghost as revenant anticipated here, the film creates its own surreal phantasmagoria of corporeality, architecture, and nature, in whose expressive images we are as completely caught up as the ivy.