Peter Kubelka

Peter Kubelka (born 23 March 1934) is an Austrian filmmaker, architect, musician, curator and lecturer. His films, few in number, are known to be carefully edited and extremely brief. He is known for his 1966 Unsere Afrikareise (Our Trip to Africa), and for other very short and intricately-edited films. Arnulf Rainer, a short film which alternates black and clear film, and white noise and silence, is considered a seminal work inscribing the edges of film theory. Conflated with a later effort by Tony Conrad called, "The Flicker", a notion developed that "flicker films" were a subcategory of experimental or avant garde. There wasn't, and Kubelka was creating a "pure" film with only the elements of dark and light. While not ignoring Kubelka's efforts, Conrad created a similar piece with a very different concept, focused more on rhythm and perceptual distortion. Kubelka preferred the concrete. Kubelka also created two pieces Adebar (1957) and Schwechater (1958) that were commissioned by businesses (a dance club and a beer brand). While being rejected as ... ()