A cyborg with a split personality and fluid gender zooms through time to collect his/her ”selves”in a struggle against a family obsessed by lineage: This cartoon-like futuristic low-budget horrorsatire by the Austro-British filmmaker Ashley Hans Scheirl turns the real into the absurd, for theduration of a small cybernetic, chemo-sexual film adventure at least. Identity is just a matter ofcreativity, and far beyond cinema‘s limitations. (Stefan Grissemann)
Ashley Hans Scheirl is an Austrian filmmaker, performance artist, and painter and an importantrepresentative of the international queer and transgender scene, who first became known for herexperimental films. Scheirl’s work is transmedial, transdisciplinary and transformative. She hasbeen a professor for Contextual Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna since 2006.Ashley Hans Scheirl’s work has been shown internationally at exhibition spaces (amongst themthe New Museum in New York, the Shedhalle in Zürich, and the Nova Galerija in Zagreb), at filmfestivals, and at documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel.
Claudia Slanar is an art historian, writer, and curator of the Blickle Cinema and Blickle VideoArchive at Belvedere 21. She has lectured on creative writing and conceptual, spatial art practicesat the University of Applied Arts, in Vienna as well as at Webster Private University. In hercuratorial and discursive practice, she deals with the performativity of historical narratives aswell as the changing role of artistic authorship in contemporary society. She has published onperformative practices, film and spatial theory in several international books and exhibitioncatalogues.
Screening
Ashley Hans Scheirl
Dandy Dust, AT/UK 1998, 94 min., English OV with German subtitles
Followed by a conversation between Ashley Hans Scheirl and Claudia Slanar
DANDY DUST
Director, script, editing: Ashley Hans Scheirl
Camera and digital animation: Jana Cipriani
Costumes: Amory Peart
Sound design: Jewels/Jason Barker
Music: Yossarian, Emma EJ Doubell, Bent
With
Ashley Hans Scheirl, Suzie Krueger, Tre Temperilli aka Trash, Leonora Rogers-Wright, Svar Simpson,Angela de Castro, Del la Grace Volcano, Sarah Schulman, Sue Golding aka Johnny de Philo, TinaKeane