Bertold Stallmach, 1984
Art
Jury report
The last words of Christ on the cross are the culmination of Bertold Stallmach’s short animation film shown on a flat-screen monitor. Nothing is achieved, yet “design your life” is the last message that, on one level, certainly stands for the artist’s films as a whole. Shown in a black box, the 16-minute piece does not shy away from big issues either. A convulsive act determines the different plot strands, merging, dividing and running ahead to prepare an escape into the next world with child-like cries. Impressively, Bertold Stallmach manages to incorporate both large and small elements into his stories as well as avoiding the suffocating effect that perfectionism would have had on them on the digital screen.