This Movie Is a Gift

Daniel Spoerri creates works of art from found objects that lose their actual function as soon as he transforms them into new figurations in his pictures. Anja Salomonowitz makes films that are generally dedicated to the visualization of buried times and conflicts. An intersection of the two is "This Movie is a Gift", a work that interweaves their works in an extremely personal way. The title of the film already suggests that it is more about a gift than a representation: Salomonowitz thanks Spoerri with this portrait. For his part, he has given her one of his assemblages, in which a porcelain heart associated with her deceased father occupies a privileged place. The encounter with the artist in his studio, a museum of discarded things, becomes an opportunity to tie his work with these objects, the “Fallenbilder”, back to his biography. Spoerri, born Feinstein, originally comes from Romania; his Jewish father was deported and murdered. Switzerland meant a new beginning for the later co-inventor of Nouveau Réalisme. However, the memories of his traumatic past pave their own way: Spoerri's artistic practice is also evident in Salomonowitz as an attempt to confront the lost part of his family history.