Ivan Faktor: First Program

The exhibition of the Croatian artist Ivan Faktor (*1953, Crnac) presents for the first time in Germany an overview of his comprehensive oeuvre. Along with experimental films of the 1970s, such as »First Program« (1978), »Little Sugar Vaults« (1978) and »Balance on the Garret of OZ« (1979), which are shaped by the new art influences of those years, the artist worked in subsequent years on analytic art that stood in relation to his experiences with video and photography of the »photo graphos«.

In the exhibition at ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art, especially the piece »15 minutes for Nada Lang« from the year 2000 shows Faktor’s unique artistic expression – a synthesis of performance, installation, and film sequences, which treat the topics of »evil« and death in an indirect way.

Using montage techniques, the artist creates multi-layered worlds, in which early works become the actors of subsequent works and are thereby tied into the plot. In this context, the film »Das Lied ist aus« (2002) and the complex multimedia project »Kangaroo Court« (2005/2007) have a basis in the film »M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder« (1931), the first of Fritz Lang’s sound films and at the same time, his last film to be filmed in Germany. Faktor makes use of analysis, alienation, and restaging, to combine elements of film history, personal experience, and political themes into fascinating films, objects, and installations.