The artist collective Metahaven is creating a multimedia installation exclusively for Kunsthalle Krems. Entitled Chaos Theory, the multi-voice film essay will be projected onto a curtain in the Oberlichtsaal. The absence of linguistic reference to reality and the ineffability of the metaphysical are the film’s main themes. Subtitles play an important role for the artists and are integrated into the cinematographic setting.

Entangled and haunting, Metahaven’s short film Chaos Theory (2021) centers on children, adults, and parental relationships. X (Valentina Di Mondo), the child, is adventurous and associative; the adult, Y/Z (Georgina Dávid), appears pensive and tormented by emotion. Yet, she is ever as dedicated to nurturing X.

Just after the two have departed on an elevator journey downward, the film cuts to a bright space in which Y/Z speaks to X:

What is present
what is physical
quite like joy itself?

X’s playful axioms and aphorisms intersect with this monologue:

I see us in things that are not us.
In the drawings of the seats on the bus.

X tells of a dream she had about black swans. When the swans appear, the fantasy becomes concrete, and play and belonging have the last word.

Chaos Theory is a successor to Metahaven’s films Information Skies (2016) and Hometown (2018). It combines cinematic scenes, “homemade cinema,” and stop-motion animation within a tightly woven text. A visceral poetics of inhabiting the present occupies the foreground.

Metahaven, founded by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden, is a Dutch artist collective working in film, design and internet art.

The installation is a donaufestival commission and will be presented for the first time in Krems. The production is a joint cooperation between Kunsthalle Krems and donaufestival.

Curator: Thomas Edlinger