THIEVERY AND SONGS
Directed by Gernot Wieland
(2016) • 22:40 min • Super8/HD Video
SYNOPSIS
In Thievery and Songs Wieland narrates a dream he had about the Town Musicians of Bremen. The film itself comes across as a dream; it brings together fairytale animal characters visiting their psychotherapists with Wieland’s own childhood recollections, transformation into a snail, and the meaning of landscapes. Thievery and Songs also delves into the true story of a Jewish-Austrian dancer who escaped Austria for Bombay in 1938. Fables, memory, histories, and reflections on contemporary life collapse into a visual philosophy of being, conveying a tragicomic spirit that mingles irony and absurdity with a gripping, poetic sobriety.
Séamus Kealy, Salzburger Kunstverein
The MOSTYN Open 20 Award selection panel: Lydia Yee (Chief Curator, Whitechapel Gallery), Chus Martínez (Curator and Head of the Institute of Art, FHNW Academy of Arts and Design, Basel), Alfredo Cramerotti (Director, MOSTYN). In a statement the selectors said:
“Gernot Wieland’s accomplished and complex work stood out for the panel, specifically for the way in which it creates a narrative around the human condition and how it examines the place of the individual in society.”
Thievery and Songs was shown at BIENALSUR, 3rd Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de
America del Sur, Buenos Aires, Argentinia, 2021/2022; Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, 2020; Salzburger
Kunstverein, Salzburg, 2020; Zoo Cosmos, Ange Leccia Art Center, Oletta, 2020; ANIMA - Taiwan
International Video Art Exhibition, Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei, 2020; Vdrome, London, 2019;
Survival Kit, LCCA, Riga, 2017; MOSTYN Open 20, Llandudno, 2017; 34. Dokumentarfilm- und
Videofest, Kassel, 2017; Short Film Festival, Hamburg, 2017 and at Body Luggage – Migration of
Gestures, Kunsthaus Graz, festival steirischer herbst (2016).