Peter Weibel

In the Expanded Cinema installation »Lichtseil« [Light Rope] Peter Weibel stretches a rope between a projector, a ladder, and a screen. The light beam of the projector, which in a conventional way brings the film to light in the first place, is materialized here by a rope that casts an image onto the projection screen: the shadow of the rope and the ladder. The perspective construction between the projector and the projection screen is rendered comprehensible. The shadow of the ladder and rope forms the content of the »film without film« (Weibel), which in turn thematizes the relationship between image and reality. Peter Weibel thus raises awareness of the illusionistic dimension of the medium of film. At the same time he refers to the theatrical and cinematographic tradition of shadow and light plays. By emphasizing illusionism and revealing how mechanisms of illusion function, he criticizes all illusion systems, from film to religion, the »future of an illusion« (Sigmund Freud, 1927), using the metaphor of the ladder to heaven as an example.