Work conceived to Under Hitchcock exhibition.
Technical description: multimedia installation made out of 6 musical fountains and one dark room; frame from Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock( 1960). Soundtracks from films such as: 'To Catch a Thief', 'North by Northwest', 'Psycho', 'The Birds', 'Marnie', 'Frenzy', 'Family Plot'. Loop's between 15 and 45 seconds.
Technical assistance : Davide Freitas

Melanie is upset: she’s got a wound from the initial attack and the first flocks are already flying over town. Up until now the birds were far away in the skies or behind the bars of a cage but they’re changing their nature: they’re becoming an image.
All of Hitchcock’s films have only one thing in common: the screeching of birds. We’ve heard them since his first sound films, they are at the centre of every film; each crime tears the veil of reality exactly like birds tear men. And from film to film there are countless shots, taken from the plot, separated from the bodies, appearing as a permanent stretch of wings before our amazed eyes. The sounds disappear from the shots and the shots rise from the sounds, shots that are screams and screams that are visions: an image doesn’t have a nature, it’s always a product of imagination.

« Or, il se pourrait que l’image soit du règne animal… »
Fernand Deligny

'Phoenix Tapes' show re-edited excerpts from 40 films by Alfred Hitchcock. The six chapters focused on a subjective selection of various leitmotifs in Hitchcock’s work.
Burden of Proof: A surreal patchwork of close-ups and a tribute to the magic and beauty of details one can find in Hitchcock’s work. The tape follows the track of motifs lengthwise and across the Hitchcock film years.
Derailed: The dynamic montage of Derailed confronts the viewer (and the tape’s protagonist: a train passenger rocking in sleep) with a dark and dream-like imagery embedded in shots of locomotives under steam and moving machine parts–a monstrous dream-factory setting free haunting icons of human angst.
"Commissioned for the Museum of Modern Art Oxford's 1999 exhibition Notorious: Alfred Hitchcock and Contemporary Art, which celebrated the centenary of the English director's birth, Phoenix Tapes is the work of German filmmakers Matthias Müller and Christoph Girardet. They edited excerpts excised from 40 Hitchcock films into six short sections that reveal his droll, dark obsessions and techniques. The result is an encyclopedic investigation of Hitchcock's themes and preoccupations, which revolve around neuroses overshadowed by a foreboding threat. Müller describes this video as "a surreal, crude patchwork that suggests a narrative, then breaks it." Opening with the stark landscapes in the "Rutland" section, Phoenix Tapes exposes Hitchcock¹s method of showing scenes of innocuous beauty and normality right before a violent or menacing act. The audience is lulled into a feeling of safety before the shattering shift in tone. Next, Müller and Girardet focus on close-ups of objects that offer telltale clues in "Burden of Proof" and the intimidating power of locomotives in "Derailed." Hitchcock's disturbing images of women fill out two of their most impressive psychodramas. In "Why Don't You Love Me?" they show the demented relationships between killers and their overbearing mothers, followed by "Bedroom," in which beautiful women are brutalized when trapped in menacing situations. Those vicious sections are countered by the final part, "Necrologue," in which frames of a resplendent Ingrid Bergman are slowed to a point where it's difficult to discern whether she's waking from a dream or a more permanent slumber. While film buffs may torture themselves to identify the sources of the succession of clips in Phoenix Tapes, others can see how Müller and Girardet have masterfully captured the essence of Hitchcock's work through their thorough assemblage and editing of cinematic gestures from these beloved classics."

Dean Otto, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2007

Obsessed with de/reconstructing our corrupted visions of media, celebrity and appearance, Johan Grimonprez assembled a bewildering gaggle of Hitchcock lookalikes, staggering in girth and exacting in attitude, in a quest to find the most accurate specimen. The extent of such an endeavour is matched only by its fiendish yet stylish plot – recording them both in and out of character – whilst the would-be dopplegangers replay a selection of the trademark cameo appearances that Hitch made in his own flicks. The result could be seen as a dethroning of the Master of Suspense or as a celebration of iconography. Just don’t take a shower before you see it!
“I thought I was safe until you guys came along, digging up all those others Hitchcock look-alikes. Now we will have to find ways of disposing of them...” Ron Burrage, professional Hitchcock look-alike What’s your favorite Hitchcock film? Obsessed with de/reconstructing our corrupted visions of media, celebrity and appearance, Johan Grimonprez assembled a bewildering gaggle of Hitchcock lookalikes, staggering in girth and exacting in attitude, in a quest to find the most accurate specimen. The extent of such an endeavour is matched only by its fiendish yet stylish plot – recording them both in and out of character – whilst the would-be dopplegangers replay a selection of the trademark cameo appearances that Hitch made in his own flicks. The result could be seen as a dethroning of the Master of Suspense or as a celebration of iconography. Just don’t take a shower before you see it!

Potrait a l'Helice
Video, colour, w/sound, 3 fans. The installation uses a very short excerpt from 'North by Northwest' by Alfred Hitchcock (1959) and several fragments from 'The Shipwreck', by J.M.W. Turner (1805). Duration: loop of 36’ 45”; technical and editing assistant: Cédric Jouan ; technical assistant, installation: Davide FreitasThe installation was made in 2006 but was presented for the first time in its museum form at the “Under Hitchcock” exhibition. From the series 'Essence de l’Image', 'Portraits Olfactifs'.

This installation associated, through an overlay, a close-up of Eve Kendall (played by Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest) with one of Turner’s sea paintings entitled The Shipwreck that depicted several boats caught up in a storm. The shot where the protagonist appeared was presented in a overhanging screen, diagonal to the viewer. Three fans faced the screen and occasionally came on with the arrival of visitors.

Portrait a l'Écume
Video; colour; silent; soap bubble machine and projector; duration: 6’ to 8’ loops; technical assistance: Xavier Gautier;; technical assistance to the installation: Davide Freitas; installation created for the exhibition “Under Hitchcock”. Work conceived to Under Hitchcock exhibition.

'Portrait à l’écume', which is devoted to Madeleine, the character played by Kim Novak in 'Vertigo', took place in two adjoining rooms. In the first one, at the top of a long flight of stairs, there was a soap bubble machine that intermittently emited a series of faintly pink bubbles,. Further inside, in the second room, there was a video projection that put together different excerpts from 'Vertigo'.

Lovely Memories
Twelve montages using different excerpts from Frenzy by Alfred Hitchcock (1972). Duration: from 11’’ to 13’; technical Assistance: Xavier Gautier; technical assistance to the installation (gallery): Davide Freitas; installation created for the exhibition “Under Hitchcock”. Work conceived to Under Hitchcock exhibition.

An enormous amount of potatoes were piled up in the exhibition room. A woman’s shoe - a pump - lied on top of the pile where an old TV had been partially buried. On screen we could see an excerpt from Frenzy where the character Brenda Blaney (Barbara Leigh-Hunt) was trying to lift herself up from an armchair. A swing was hunged in front of the TV. Visitors could set to watch the images on the screen or swing over the potatoes. When the swing was used, Brenda’s image disappeared briefly and another series of montages with flashing images taken from Frenzy appeared.

Work conceived to Under Hitchcock exhibition.

This piece, which includes the «Untitled Film Sets» series made for Solar, has a fixed image that recalls a shot from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, namely the one where the sinister house at the top of the hill can be seen. The image, presented in a light box suspended from a tubular structure, creates the feeling of a movie screen.

This work is on permanent exhibition.

Phoenix Tapes
The Phoenix Tapes show re-edited excerpts from 40 films by Alfred Hitchcock. The six chapters focus on a subjective selection of various leitmotifs in Hitchcock’s work.
Burden of Proof: A surreal patchwork of close-ups and a tribute to the magic and beauty of details one can find in Hitchcock’s work. The tape follows the track of motifs lengthwise and across the Hitchcock film years.
Derailed: The dynamic montage of Derailed confronts the viewer (and the tape’s protagonist: a train passenger rocking in sleep) with a dark and dream-like imagery embedded in shots of locomotives under steam and moving machine parts–a monstrous dream-factory setting free haunting icons of human angst.

Alpsee
A childhood in the Sixties. A heart beats in the cabinet. Voices rain down on the city. A tree grows on planet Mars. It is a miracle. In 'Alpsee', Matthias Müller combines for the first time his specific method of the experimental-surrealistic montage of found-footage-material with the conventional narration of a story in film scenes. The film has on the one hand scenes done exactly according to a script, and on the other hand makes use of material from the private collection of Müller 's father and selected scenes from the TV series Fury and Lassie. The story turns on a boy growing up in the early 1960's and his relation to his mother. Both are bound by a strangely emotionless relation, from which every affectionate and physical gesture is excluded. Most of the time we see the mother at work in the household. She cleans, she irons, she bakes and cooks, while the boy sits beside her bored. When she for once embraces her son, this seems less like an affectionate gesture than a clench. The montage and repetition of similar scenes from the TV series Fury make this particularly vivid. From this narrow world the boy can flee only in his day-dreams. His longing for freedom is reflected in the motif of the sky and outer space, which often introduces the film's fantasy sequences. At first sight, the boy looks very well-behaved. His hair is parted orderly at the side and his shirt buttoned up to the top button. Yet he harbours aggressive-subversive thoughts. The story in Alpsee is framed by found-footage-material from Matthias Müller’s father. Thus we see at the beginning pictures of a wedding and at the end one of Müller 's mother bathing at sunset. By contrast, the scenes from the TV series Lassie and Fury function to support the narrative. They visualize the boy's dreams, or they double certain scenes. Alpsee develops its experimental and surrealistic power through montage, which functions in accordance with the principle of similarity.
“With the glowing colours in Alpsee, Müller leaves the gloom that prevailed in the universe of his earlier films. His clinical sharpness, however, does not deprive the film of its secret, its disquieting strangeness–and thus recalls Buñuel and Hitchcock." Jacques Kermabon, Bref, Paris, 1995
“Despite the seemingly innocuous gestures of household life, a dark, unmanageable world seems to want to erupt from it. At one point it literally does: in a stunning image, the milk the mother pours for her son overflows the glass onto the table, the floor, and eventually down the hall in an endless stream. This uncontrolled secretion, pure white, is disturbingly connected to the enigmatic maternal body. The sparse decor of the home, the primary color scheme, and high key lighting all emphasize the preternatural clarity of the image in Alpsee. As in allegory, the sharp definition of the image belies its opaque, brooding signification. The pristine look of this film thus gives rise to its confusing, nightmarish quality, borne out of its name: the German word for nightmare is Alptraum.“ Alice A. Kuzniar: “The Queer German Cinema“. Stanford, 2000

A woman is taking pictures of cages in a zoo. The animals from within stare back at the woman and follow her with their eyes. The viewer and the object change places. The woman plunges into deep water, where a game of violent underwater rugby is on. She surfaces to breathe, but the stares of the animals and the camera's view block her escape route. In desperation she makes an extreme decision. "When I started to develop the script, there was one moment clearly in my mind. It was a winter’s night. I was standing in snow with my cameras. It was dark and I was taking pictures of a brightly-lit swimming pool from the outside. Suddenly I saw myself and the whole situation from a distance. That image became more interesting to me than what I was seeing through my camera at that moment. I thought how strongly imbedded a person’s own image is in his or her consciousness and how creating images and taking photographs at a specific moment shapes that image. Pictures remain to witness the existence of their taker as tangible objects, but they also represent captured moments in the flow of an individual’s memory. That one moment and the thoughts it evoked formed the basis for my film Black Water." Salla Tykka