Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler

Teresa Hubbard

Born 1965, Dublin

lives and work in Austin, Texas and Berlin

Alexander Birchler

Born 1962, Baden, Switzerland

lives and work in Austin, Texas and Berlin

Movie Mountain (Méliès), 2011

high-definition 2-channel film installation,

color, sound, 24 minutes

* Grand Paris Texas, 2009

high-definition single-channel film, color, sound, 54 minutes

Courtesy of the artists; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin; and Vera Munro Gallery, Hamburg

Movie Mountain (Méliès) is the second part in Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler’s    trilogy Sound Speed Marker that follows cinematic myths and their metamorphoses, and lingers over the way in which cinema—in its wider sense: the movie, the industry, the glamor, the fantasy—leaves its stamp on people long after the lights in the hall are switched back on. While Movie Mountain (Méliès) is  featured in the gallery as a two-channel installation with a sculptural presence, Grand Paris Texas is screened in the Museum’s cinema at set times. The different presentation circumstances, seemingly technical, embody the duality at the heart of Hubbard and Birchler’s work: between the worlds of art and cinema, and simultaneously in both worlds.

A rumor about a mountain called Movie Mountain in far-west Texas, at the Mexican border, leads Hubbard and Birchler on a journey which traverses landscape, memory and cinema. They meet local people and learn that the area had once been a vibrant train junction on the way out to the West as well as a silent movie set in the early 20th century. The story of Gaston Méliès, brother of cinema pioneer Georges Méliès, hinted in the parentheses of the title, opens a whole chapter of early cinema history: dreams, experiments, successes and failures.   Hubbard and Birchler’s films seem like sequels to existing films, or to existing chapters of life. Both merge together until the gap between real and cinematic reality is blurred.

* Screenings of Grand Paris Texas:

Friday, 1 June 2018, 12 noon, Kauffman–Gitter Hall

Tuesday, 26 June 2018, 20:00, Jeannette and Yehuda Assia Auditorium

View Trailer

Google Doodles/Google Spotlight Stories: Back to the Moon Theatrical, celebrating the life and artistry of French illusionist and film director Georges Méliès.