3-channel video installation, single channel video
17min 30sec (2 min excerpt)
HD

Video: Christoph Oertli
Sounddesign: Tomek Kolczynski

This video installation situates the viewer within an urban streetscape (Palermo) dominated by towering buildings. These structures carry the marks of time—shaped across different eras—and the traces of its passage, visible in their varying states of decay.
Subtly animated, the buildings pulse with faint movement, appearing as dark silhouettes against the onset of night. Within their forms reside traces of lived experience: accumulated emotions, memories, and thoughts. In their aggregation, small, everyday details give rise to monumental forms that ascend against the sky.

2025
single-channel video
9min (1min excerpt)
HD

In this performative video a fixed sequence of steps and movements of a traditional dance draws paths on the ground. These are constant repetitions, slowed down, carefully executed, within the city (Palermo) and its contemporary everyday life.

I am in search of a city memory. While buildings are at least for a while visible signs of the lived life of a place, I wonder what could be traces of the immaterial values such as thoughts, emotions, knowledge and experiences of the people who have lived in a city.

single-channel video
22min (1min 20sec excerpt)
HD

In economically saturated Switzerland there is a growing preference for expensive and oversized cars combined with rural homes. The tableau-like sceneries filled with self-sufficiency stand in stark contrast to the urgent global challenges.

Sounddesign: Thomas Jeker

single-channel video
48min (1min 30sec excerpt)
HD

‘Sensing Bodies’ deals with the use of our bodies in a perfected and spaciously designed and built environment. The film takes a look at a highly organized society and examines questions of active body experience versus the static state of the virtual experience. We see moments of stillness in a big city; movement seems to be shifted into the world of thought, communication happens with the physically absent. The scary model of security and distance during the pandemic has already been prepared here.

Sounddesign: Thomas Jeker

3-channel video installation
8min 30sec (2min excerpt)
HD

Slow camera travellings through the cité modèle, Laeken/Brussels.
Projections on wall and floors.
Premiere: ’Sensing Bodies’, Kunsthaus Baselland (2020).

2-channel video installation
6 / 11min (2min excerpt)
HD

Slow travelling shots along the tracks of Gare du Nord in Brussels. The images were shot during a strike of the SNCB: the train station is almost deserted. One overlooks the tracks and the serial structure of the facilities, where everything is ready for the organization of the now imaginary crowd.

Premiere: ’hier – dort’, Benzeholz, Meggen/Lucerne (05’2017)

2-channel video installation
15min (2min 30sec excerpt)
HD

A group of young Ethiopians is gathering in a hall. Some of them instruct the others what to do by calling them by their names. Each student faces the camera for a moment. Later, other formations inside the hall are taken, which happens through choreographed actions: a starting line is marked on the floor and the group gets ready to start a race. The young Ethiopians represent a new generation outside of the western world, and our gaze must withstand their powerfull presence.

Premiere: VideoWindow zu Gast in der Galerie Bob Gysin, Zürich, October 6th 2015
Screenings: 3rd Minikino Film Week – Int’l Short Film Festival Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia (10’2017); 1st International Independent Permanent Memories Festival, Italy (06’2017); ’hier – dort’, Benzeholz, Meggen/Luzern (05’2017); 6th Colortape International Film Festival, Australia (05’2017); 6th Carmarthen Bay Film Festival, Wales (05’2017); 4th International Motion Festival, Cyprus (05’2017); 1st Festival Internacional de Cine del Cono Sur, Chile (04’2017); Festival of Tolerance – JFF Zagreb (04’2017); MADATAC 08, Centro Conde Duque, Madrid (01’2017); Sweet as Film Festival, Montréal/Canada (12’2016); 18th Madurai Film Festival, India (12’2016); 14th Int. Short & Independent Film Festival Dhaka, Bangladesh (12’2016); Edinburgh Artists’ Moving Image Festival (EAMIF) (11’2016); FIAC Paris, Cinéphémère, Jardins des Tuileries (10’2016); Oslo Night, HEK Basel (09’2016); Festival Kugoma, Maputo/Moçambique (09’2016); Festival Kinono, Tinos Island, GR (07’2016); FID Festival International de Cinéma Marseille (07’2016); VideoEx, Zürich (05’2016); 51. Solothurner Filmtage (01’2016).

single channel video installation
9min (2min excerpt)
HD

‘Timeline’ is set in a park in a new multistoried building quarter of Brussels. The camera observes the park from a fixed point of view. It pans slowly from left to right, sometimes also jerkily. Suddenly we notice changes. Time leaps let different seasons follow each other. A narrow red shining ribbon, which is put up between metal posts, flutters steadfastly in the wind like a common theme, that streches out through the whole scenery.

Premiere: RoundAbout, Videokunst im Gespräch, akku Emmenbrücke/Luzern, November 2014

single channel video
13min (2min excerpt)
HD

A square on the campus of Chinese University of Hong Kong, where students cross, meet or talk on their phones.
Different layers of documentary and staged images show the multitude of personal realities that are present on one spot. First of all it’s the people’s voices that illustrate the richness of each moment. These voices link people and would form, were they visualized, a whole jungle of threads in the air. The camera penetrates the space easily as an occasional spectator never could.

performers: Su-Mi Jang and Sung-Im Her

music: Thomas Jeker

award: ‘ZOOM’ Basler Filmpreis, best art film 2013

single channel video
11min (2min excerpt)
HD

The camera is invading an over-stuffed apartment, floating through an almost surreal material world. There is a presence of the real tenant, supposedly an old man, who we don’t get to see. Instead, a younger man in search of a place to rest is wandering about.The rooms reveal the standstill of a lonley person, who has separated himself from life and the outside world by pileing up consumer objects. A glance out of the window shows a formerly fancy boulevard in Brussels, ruled today by Moroccan traders and African immigrants.

single channel video or 2-channel video installation
10min 30sec (2min excerpt)
HDV

Two men walk through a former hospital.The camera follows one man until he comes across the other. Their meetings vary from distant and casual to friendly and intimate. The state of the empty building changes very suddendly: it’s falling apart.

performer: Rüdiger Böß, Marco Zbinden

sounddesign: Thomas Jeker

nominated for ‘Basler Filmpreis 2009’, category ‘videoart’

2-channel video installation or single channel video
10min (2min excerpt)
HD

In this video installation we see different places of a city. In slow horizontal movements the camera pans across façades and greenery. It’s like an extended moment in the summer, at sunset, when a strong light is hitting the sceneries almost horizontally and dividing them in light and dark zones. People traverse from light to dark or vice versa, as if the overstepping of this border was something very significant or magical. The dark zones are getting only a dimension through the actors’ movements. They become figures appearing or disappearing from further away, from the depth of an undefined black space behind the façades. One could call it backstage or behind the scenes, where a parallel world seems to exist. It’s something like a time- and spaceless existence, where humans come from and go back into.

Rencontres Internationales Paris Berlin, projection ‘The ground is moving’, Centre Pompidou, Paris, November 2011

2009
single channel video installation
5min 50sec (2min 20sec excerpt)
HDV

First part of a trilogy that has been filmed in Egypt, Hong Kong and Belgium.

Outside of Luxor the eye moves in a slow circle. People are standing in the desert, alone or in groups. Tourists descend from the sky in a large red balloon. The camera’s perspective corresponds to the gaze of a foreigner having a look around. A couple of details sail past, without for all that rendering the situation as a whole perceptible. The eye wanders on across the surface of the desert. Urban settlements come into view. An arrival is summed up in one long, slow pan, a touchdown on a strange planet, recounted from a horizontal perspective only gradually closing the gap between itself and its object.

1. Prize SCOPE Subject/Art Basel 2010, videoart

Live Performance with Ahmad El-Sawy (oud, voice, electronics, composition) and video-projection
or single channel video
45min (3 min excerpt)
HDV

Starting point is the legend of Sinbad and his journeys on the sea. What would Sinbad get to see if he’d be travelling nowadays? The cooperation of the Egyptian musician and the Swiss video artist combines two different view points: Ahmad El-Sawy has transferred Arabic poems into music. Some of those texts can be read as comment about our times dispite the fact that they originate from past centuries. The writers talk about home, rich and poor, religion and most importantly about the loss of the own culture.
Christoph Oertli has shot video images during two longer stays in Egypt and compressed these images into a visual strand, which resembles a journey through different centuries: landscapes, urban scenes and ultramodern building complexes slowly drift past the camera. A young man embodies todays’ Sinbad; occasionally he’s travelling within his own country, but he undertakes as well virtual journeys at his computer, since means and possibilities are missing for travelling abroad.

single channel video
9min (1min 50sec excerpt)
SD Pal

The camera eye is overlooking one day of Taxila’s life. She walks in the street, sits with friends at the table, goes to sleep, climbs at night out of the window and approaches a tree in the courtyard. By looking back, internal and external voices mix to an incomplete report. The smile of the afternoon faces the dark front of humans, who used to be close friends.

performer: Danaé Verlet, Tristan Christann, Ursula Llewelyn, Usman Saeed, Ryad Slimani, Akira Tsukada

sounddesign: Thomas Jeker

single channel video
11min (2min excerpt)
SD Pal

Christoph Oertli’s video shows a person walking very slowly through the bustling city, quiet suburbs and peaceful rooftops of Cairo. As the districts change, so does the walker who continues his measured pace while observing the world around him without interaction. The environmental sound changes from noisy traffic to silence (d/Art/07 Sydney).

performer: Mohammed Aladin, Mazin Algizoly, Omar Ghayatt, Adham Hafez, Diyaaldin Helmy, Roby, Mohammed Sadik, Tarek Shalaby, Mohammed Roshdy.

1er prix Vidéoformes, Clermont-Ferrand/France (2008)

single channel video
4min
SD Pal

Series of short videos interpreting pop songs: ‘Song for Alice’ by Keren Ann.

Alice: The sequence shot evokes a street at night and a fire of which one believes responsible a homeless woman. An installation with suspended hairdryers and flying plastic bags as stagecraft elements.

performer: Christoph Oertli

single channel video
4min
SD Pal

Series of short videos interpreting pop songs: ‘Orfeu’ by Maria Bethania

Orfeo in the world of the dead; urged by Euridice, he turns around and looks at her and she immediately dies. An intimate and passionate text spreads out on the grounds of a hospital.

Performer: Christoph Oertli

single channel video
9min 50sec (2min 20sec excerpt)
SD Pal

The video shows a group of men, gathered in the hall of a public building. The men speak, laugh and observe. Some leave and return later; they behave strangely. The unconscious rules of social behavior are disrupted by unexpected dynamics and gestures.

performer: Jean-Paul Bezzina, Mauro Bordin, Nicolas Buchoux, Nicolas Carpentier, Massimo Carrozzo, Daniel Collados, Antoine Colnot, Jean-Marc Coudert, Alexandre Delawarde, Jean-Christophe Laurier, Franklin Roulot, Ydire Saïdi, David Seigneur, Gregor Siber, Clemens Stolzenberg, Jonas Zipf.

sounddesign: Thomas Jeker

single channel video
8min
SD Pal

A living room at night, selectivley furnished. No trace of inhabitants. A naked young man repeatedly crosses the space. He lies down on a sofa. He puts a dish on the table. He acts like a stranger who has crept into the house. Furniture trembles, appears, disappears as if moved by an invisible hand. The intimacy and nearness to the man’s body contrasts sharply with the view seen from outside; we are actually looking through a shop window.

performer: Clément Pelletier

2-channel video installation
6min 30sec (1min 50sec excerpt)
SD Pal

In a public space a man suddenly stands still. Apparently he has lost trust in immediate reality. He’s not able anymore to take one step further. He clutches at thin air. He still feels threatened despite the tidiness of the impersonal furniture around him. There will be an attempt to get this man back into the present.

performer: Emmanuel Landier, Jean-Christophe Laurier

1 to 7-channel video installation
7 in 30sec / 15min (2min excerpt)
SD Pal

In this piece the performer is linked with a mobile camera via a nylon thread. Each of his gestures pulls the camera sideways and animates his image. A strange dance develops which throws the performer off-centre or even out of sight. His appearance on stage is undermined by his own effort. Each impulse to act threatens his position in the spotlight.

performer: Christoph Oertli

V.I.D. (Video in der Dampfzentrale)-award Bern (2003)

single channel video
7min 30sec
SD Pal

Different fragments of furniture and lamps are moving suspended in an open space. ‚Housekeeping‘ explores what is a home. Some create their home, some abandon it and some look for it for a lifetime. What do we surround ourselves with? How much structure, rhythm, security, obligation and responsibility belong to our idea of home? The individual participates in a ruling system. Sometimes what looks like an enviable situation can transform into threat.

1er prix Vidéoformes, Clermont-Ferrand/France (2003)

single channel video
12min
SD Pal

This video is about the paradox between relating to the infinite and being confined to the present moment. Felix is at the end of a love affair. He would like to escape this painful feeling by changing his outlook on life: would it be possible to redefine himself in another situation or another time by changing his identity? Felix feels trapped and he would like to free himself. A monochrome portrait captures only a brief moment in someone’s life.

performer: Christoph Oertli

single channel documentary video
58min
SD Pal

https://vimeo.com/119600424

The life of an international crew on a cruise ship: young people from Germany, Italy, Eastern Europe, Indonesia and the Philippines tell about theire experiences. While the ship is travelling around the world, the centre of attention is given to the existence inside the ship. Fractions of the journey appear incidentally. Everyday life on the ship is hardly influenced by the journey. It’s a world on it’s own!

award Film- und Videotage Basel (1997)

single channel video
4min
SD Pal

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A video piece to listen to, composed with voices of three women. Sounds and images originate from interviews with each of the women in a fantasy language. The editing is based on a musical composition, which was developped from the interview material. This video puts the main focus on sound and leaves the images secondary. For once the audio track determines the drama and is only complemented by the visual images.

performer: Clara Buntin, Magdalena Furrer, Anita Pfister