Capital Celluloid 2023 — Day 175: Sat June 24

Answering the Sun (Kohlberger, 2022): ICA Cinema, 4.30pm

Sonic Cinema presents Rainer Kohlberger’s Answering the Sun – a maximal, stroboscopic colour odyssey to the limits of human perception. Riffing on the optical phenomenon that occurs when staring at the sun, Kohlberger’s first feature adeptly modernises avant garde cinema’s long tradition of visual music and flicker in a 60-minute bombardment of coloured fields, op art geometry, hallucinatory passages and a wall of sound.

‘Rainer Kohlberger’s work speaks of seduction, an overstimulation and deception of the senses, monochrome-pumping colour surfaces, powerful drones. Strong light signals create afterimages on the retina, while specific acoustic stimuli stimulate the ear to generate sounds on its own, and the entire body is affected with an implicit loss of control. And in all the dizzying flickering, throbbing, and pulsating, a sun appears, largely bathed in vibrant colors.’ 

– Regina Schlagnitweit

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Rainer Kohlberger hosted by Dr. Eleni Ikoniadou.

Here (and above) is another work by Kohlberger, White Light/White Heat from 2011.