Eternal Hunt

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In a room enclosed by concrete walls, the camera circles a golden apple. Beyond the walls, there is no exterior space, no sky—only a formless blackness. Two faceless avatars appear, directing their actions toward the apple without ever reaching it. Its reflective surface reveals a second environment: a sealed-off, abandoned place with caged windows.

The scene is structured as a closed loop. Approach, violence, and repetition intertwine without reaching a conclusion. The apple functions as a fixed point—a center that both focuses and blocks the sequences.

In the end, the room remains empty: surrounded by concrete, covered with traces of action, counting, and marking.

Metamorphosis

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A real existing space runs through a “what-if” of infinite possibilities, thought up by me, visualised by an artificial intelligence. This work was produced for the event “…WILL BE EATEN BY THE RAVENS” at the Stadttheater Neuburg a.d.Donau (16.06.2024). This video was accompanied by a live performance of the piece Nocturne by Lili Boulanger (for flute and harp).

Cycle of Prayer

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2025, Video with sound, trailer 1:59 min

Forces of nature mingle with landmarks of civilization and do not depict glorified places of longing. In the frenzy of speed, the moment evaporates and yet always returns – like the seasons.

All the videos are looped – without beginning or end, and seemingly endless – like the return of the seasons or the collective murmuring of a rosary.

Following on from the romantic landscapes of the 19th century, this video cycle in 4 parts shows landscapes of the 21st century, oscillating between real and artificial.

Spring, 3:21 min — Spring is dawning, but nature has not yet awoken – bare trees pass by. Here and there a car. Memories echo in the distance.

Autumn, 3:11 min — Rain pattering on a window. The landscape behind it seems strangely alive. Is it breathing? Is it raging? A harbinger of imminent death – in winter!

Summer, 4:24 min — A sandstorm bathes the passing landscape in warm yellow. Beautiful and terrible. Terribly beautiful.

Winter, 10 min — “Home” passes by. Will it come again? The monotonous rolling noise on the old railroad tracks makes you sleepy, and a white oblivion covers your thoughts.

Videokunst von Erika Kassnel-Henneberg

Post Mortem

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“We all carry a dead child within us. Christian Boltanski quotes Tadeusz Kantor

We move through an abandoned house. The rooms hint at their former use without explicitly revealing it. An old class photo keeps appearing on the walls. On the back it reads: “class of 1911.” The people pictured remain nameless. The image begins to change: the children’s eyes move and explore the room in perfect synchrony.

The work draws on a historical photographic practice: post-mortem photography, in which the deceased were staged as if they were still alive—an attempt to capture presence in the image. In the video work, this principle is not simply shifted but subverted: the synchronized eye movements create an artificial liveliness that, precisely through its unnaturalness, makes the absence radically visible.

I position myself as a teacher within the group and become part of this arrangement. The boundary between image and intervention dissolves. In this visual logic, time is not organized linearly, but as a circulating system in which presence and disappearance are inextricably intertwined.

Polaroid, Screenshot aus der Videoarbeit Sandbox

Sandbox V

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Sandbox is on the one hand a sandy playground for children, on the other hand a term originating from software development for an “isolated area within which any action has no effect on the external environment”. (Wikipedia)

We are sitting in a large virtual sandbox that is anything but isolated. There are many toys in it that we don’t know what they are for. And new ones are added every day. We explore them playfully and in the process we come up with ideas – good or bad….

One such toy is Dall-e 2, one of the most celebrated AIs of 2022, which can create realistic images and even artwork from a text-based description in natural language. This creative act is new and unique, and must be judged as the next stage of evolution.

The works Dall-e generates are almost perfect, and yet she generates strangely disturbing outputs in response to seemingly innocuous keywords. It begs the question, is this the toy we would give our children?

Conditio Humana II

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Conditio Humana II, 2023, video with sound, 4:48 min

Based on the work Conditio Humana I, the question of what the conditio humana is is continued here. If we consider the highest art form of human movement – dance – it is a combination of absolute body control, elegance and emotionality. This is contrasted here with a “dance” by the humanoid robot HRP-4C, as it was presented to the world public in 2010.

Dancer: Dominik Feistmantl

Homunculus

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2022, video with sound, animation, 6:34 min

The idea of creating artificial life has always been with us. The homunculus of the late Middle Ages—the “little man”—symbolizes this desire as well as the ambivalence surrounding it. Today, this figure returns not as a physical entity but as an image: as a projection of human traits onto digitally generated faces.

With the advancements in artificial intelligence since the early 2020s, portraits have emerged that lack any biographical or photographic reference yet still appear familiar. They depict faces that never existed, yet seem visually plausible.

“Homunculus” (2022) takes its cue from this. The work confronts the viewer with animated AI-generated portraits and reveals their artificial origin from the very beginning. This shifts perception: expression is both read and deconstructed. The facial expressions reinforce this ambivalence by lending the faces a sense of liveliness while simultaneously creating a sense of unease.

The work functions as an experimental setup for reception. The focus is not on the technology, but on the interplay of image, context, and perception. It examines the tipping point between acceptance and rejection: When is what is seen accepted as credible—and when does it lose this plausibility?

Phantom

“People take photos of each other
To prove that they really existed
To make sure they are there
People take photos of each other
Believing that those moments
Would stay alive for all time”

Excerpt from: Menschen Machen Fotos gegenseitig, Die goldenen Zitronen (Songtext)

Brother of Sleep

Come,O death, you brother of sleep,
come and lead me away from here;
release my little ship’s rudder,
bring me to a safe harbour!”

from: Johann Sebastian Bach Kreuzstabkantate, BWV56