24 fps - Deconstructing Movies was the title of an exhibition that opened on December 24, 2015 in Beijing/China. The exhibition was dedicated to the idea of making each and every individual frame of a given movie visible, in this case it was Zhang Yimou’s ‘Raise the Red Lantern’ that had been translated into a digital filmscroll first before being printed on wallpaper that meandered more than 40 meters in length and three meters in height along the gallery walls. More cinematographic examinations were to follow, resulting in the series Untitled Filmscrolls.

The climax seemed to be reached, though, with the digital translation of Godfrey Reggio’s QATSI Trilogy, renamed CYCLES (CYCLE OF DISRUPTION - CYCLE OF WAR - CYCLE OF CHANGE), making hundreds of thousands of frames visible, the DNA of a film. The excessive use of experimental film techniques in the original films (time lapse, jump cuts, use of color etc) revealed the most fascinating visual meta levels of the cinematic language, translating into an endless image-flow of caleidoscopic patterns no one may have been aware of existed. As in real life, viewers of a film are locked into the unfolding process of time being part of time. Looking at a scroll is like looking at time from the outside, past, presence and future happen simultaneously, transcending the usual timeline.

The mesmerising soundtrack by Thomas Fleischhauer (2024), made to fit, is adding a new dimension to the experience (silent until now).