The Perfect Square

Forum Expanded 2024

For twelve years, Gernot Wieland worked with an animal trainer who taught birds to fly in circles or squares. The film initially concentrates on the birds themselves. The image, reduced to the birds flying in and out of the frame, suggests how one might perceive one’s own flickering consciousness and perception. The volatile quality of trying to capture flying birds in frame intensifies the desire to confirm whether the birds indeed fly in a circle. Whereas the indexical image captured by the camera is a testament to the difficulty of training the birds to do something on command, the title of the work itself invokes the intellectual purity of geometric forms, considered superior by analytic philosophy to describe the laws of nature. All this implies that beings that disobey a command could be a definition of an “other.”
The film also refers to an experimental investigation conducted by Kandinsky in 1923. He had assumed that there are direct correspondences between primary colors (yellow, red, blue) and forms (triangle, square, circle). It is by these means that The Perfect Square explores the question of how aesthetic and social norms influence and control our society and our artistic creation, as well as the western view of the world.

by Gernot Wieland
with Rudolf Körner Germany / Belgium 2024 English 8’ Colour World premiere

With

Rudolf Körner

Crew

Director	Gernot Wieland
Screenplay	Maxwell Stephens, Clara Sharell, Gernot Wieland
Cinematography	Konstantin von Sichart
Editing	Konstantin von Sichart, Gernot Wieland
Music	Konstantin von Sichart, Gernot Wieland
Sound Mixing	Joseph Varschen
Animation	Konstantin von Sichart
Colour Correction	Konstantin von Sichart
Producers	Gernot Wieland, Konstantin von Sichart
Executive Producers	Olaf Stüber, Markus Hannebauer

World sales

Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V.

http://www.arsenal-berlin.de http://www.arsenal-berlin.de

Produced by

Videoart at Midnight Productions

https://www.videoart-at-midnight.de/ https://www.videoart-at-midnight.de/

Fluentum

https://www.fluentum.org https://www.fluentum.org

Tannenbaum Films

https://www.tannenbaumfilms.com https://www.tannenbaumfilms.com

Argos Centre for Audiovisual Arts

https://www.argosarts.org/ https://www.argosarts.org/

Photos

Gernot Wieland

Gernot Wieland has exhibited works in museums such as KINDL – Centre, Berlin; Künstlerhaus Bremen; Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles; Kunstmuseum Bonn; Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen; Salzburger Kunstverein, and at festivals such as International Short Film Festival Oberhausen; Videonale; IndieLisboa; European Media Art Festival; Kasseler Dokfest; International Short Film Festival, Hamburg; IFFR – Rotterdam; and TIFF – Toronto International Film Festival. Recent awards include Aus-blicke Award at blicke Filmfestival; Main Award of the German Competition at the 69th International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen; and the German Short Film Award.

Filmography

2011 Portrait of Karl Marx as a young god; 1 min. 2016 “Hello, my name is…”…and…“Yes, I'm fine.”; 18 min. · Thievery and Songs; 23 min. 2018 Ink in Milk; 13 min. 2021 Bird in Italian is Uccello; 14 min. 2023 Turtleneck Phantasies; 18 min. 2024 The Perfect Square

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2024