Rainer Kohlberger
Rainer Kohlberger (b. 1982) is an Austrian-born freelance visual artist. His work is primarily based on algorithmically generated graphics that are exposed in live performances, experimental films and installations. Kohlberger´s audio-visual compositions are fierce attacks on the human system of perception. His algorithmic works have little in common with conventional film and video and he refrains entirely from all types of representation and referentiality: neither camera- nor computer-generated motifs surface in his works. Kohlberger uses the possibilities that the present, digital projection technology offers in a radical way. What binds him in terms of intellectual history with the avant-garde movements of the 20th century is the constant search for point zero, as well as the pleasure in technical and aesthetic experimentation.
Kohlberger´s audiovisual experiments provide the audience with powerful physical and metaphysical experiences, which go far beyond what is usually found in the cinema. Image surface and image space meld into one (consciousness-)state, in which categories such as real and unreal, material and immaterial, and 2D and 3D appear obsolete.
Kohlberger's work has won several prizes, including the ZKM App Art Award for artistic innovation for his work field (2011), the Crossing Europe Local Artist Award for his work humming, fast and slow (2013), and the European Short Film Competition Prize at New Horizons Festival in Wrocław for moon blink (2015). In 2016, his film not even nothing can be free of ghosts was nominated for the IFFR Tiger Award for Short Films. Kohlberger lives and works in Berlin.