Tableaux

Tableaux presents three new works by Ulrich Seidl for the Über das Leben, die Liebe und den Tod exhibition in EYE FilmMuseum in Amsterdam . Each is composed of footage originally shot for different films but never used. The material consists of so-called tableaux, a distinctive hallmark of Seidl’s visual language in which one or more of his protagonists are filmed looking directly into the camera in silence for a brief period. These images or scenes are unsettling not only because they break the ‘sacred’ fourth wall, but above all because Seidl makes the viewer complicit. The protagonists look directly into your eyes. It is as though the viewer, rather than the person on screen, is caught in the act of voyeurism. The effect is disconcerting, yet it also creates a more immediate sense of engagement with the characters.