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Searching the Essential. Finding the Undefined.
Video installation, approx. 6 min., 2026
Concept, Regie: HUSS WEISE; Camera: HUSS WEISE, Magdalena Kallenberger; Editing: Natasha Marzliak
HUSS WEISE aka ASH + CASH aka KÄTHE + LOEWENTHAL on a Journey to Alienation
Scene from the Video »Searching the Essential, Finding the Undefined«, Video installation, approx. 6 min., 2026
Searching the Essential. Finding the Undefined.
…and hear the fog's melody
SCENE 1
The experimental film Searching the Essential, Finding the Undefined is a poetic essay on artistic self-discovery, on female authorship, on moving beyond established languages and inventing one's own. The island symbolizes both isolation and freedom — as a space for thought, a sanctuary, a place of transition, and a point of origin. A residence. Amid ice, crossing, death, new beginnings, and laughter, a search emerges for an artistic language that does not exclude the feminine — a search for the essential.
A journey across the ice from the perspective of an icebreaker. Fade-in sequences create the impression of endless movement toward a distant island.Sound: Sound Engine noise, forest percussion, a child singing fragments from »Das andere Geschlecht«.
Rough Cuts: Käthe's spirit dances expressively, sending and receiving signals. Cross–fades with the transition.Sound: as before.
Resumption of the journey — the movement intensifying into infinity.Sound: as before.
Blinding light, edited in fragmented sequences with a strobe–like effect.Sound: A transition from motoric beats and vocals into Schranz/hard techno, eventually fading into a soft hum.
A journey across the ice from the artist's perspective.Sound: engine noise, forest percussion, a soft hum.
Rough Cuts: Camera pans across icy rocky landscapes.Sound: Humming, water, waves, fragmented techno sounds.
The artist dances; in the montage, her body intertwines with Käthe's spirit — the two appear as a single figure.Sound: A superimposition of all previous soundscapes.
More landscape fragments — movement without a destination.Sound: A minimalist, pulsating sound.
SCENE 2
The art video tells the story of an artist setting out on a journey. She realizes that the existing language of art is not her own. Every familiar form of expression is male-dominated, shaped and defined by a history that is not her own. In order to find her own artistic language, the protagonist leaves the familiar world behind and enters a state of alienation.
The artist runs, searching and fleeing, in a never–ending scene (like Buster Keaton)Sound: A soft, ethereal hum; a child sings excerpts from Simone de Beauvoir's »Das andere Geschlecht«.
Rough cuts: Camera pans over icy objects on the beach.Sound: A soft hum, water, waves; a hard techno mix interspersed with excerpts from Simone de Beauvoir's »Das andere Geschlecht«.
Rough cuts: camera movements over male fantasies of the female body transformed into iron sculptures.Sound: as before, condensed.
The artist runs, searching and fleeing, in a scene that seems to go on forever (like in a Buster Keaton film)Sound: Minimal.
SCENE 3
She embarks on a journey to the island — not merely as a geographical location, but as an inner space, a place of separation, transformation, and initiation. Drawing on the concept of the Isle of the Dead, the island becomes a threshold between life and death, a place of encounter with spirits, and a transition between old identity and new existence. The journey there is a crossing, a transition. The artist lets the role assigned to her die, and fundamentally reinvents herself as an artist time and again. She cannot be defined.
The Spirit of Käthe: Dance as a signal, as a language.Sound: urban sounds, forest percussion, voice.
Close-ups of the costume intertwine with inverted landscape images. Perspectives shift.Sound: Intensification.
Camera movements through an increasingly dark forest. Fear and longing intertwine. The images fragment and distort.Sound: Building tension, breaks, overlaps.
Camera movements through an increasingly dark forest. Fear and longing intertwine. The images fragment and distort.Sound: Building tension, breaks, overlaps.
Camera movements through an increasingly dark forest. Fear and longing intertwine. The images fragment and distort.Sound: Building tension, breaks, overlaps.
The icebreaker's view of a snow–covered island.Sound: abstract, physical sound associations.
Fade to blinding white — dissolution of form.Sound: intensifying into static.
Käthe's Spirit on the Beach — A View of an Inverted, Frozen World.Sound: White Noise.
ESSAY
The footage was shot in February on Hiddensee, when the island was completely frozen over and covered in snow. In the filmic narrative, this landscape becomes a journey through time: the artist symbolically travels back to an ice age — to a time before existing orders, before hierarchies, before fixed role models. In this archaic, silent, white landscape, the island becomes a point of origin, a place before history, where a new beginning becomes possible.
The island thus becomes the central motif of the film — a place of searching, transition, and self–empowerment. It is not a destination in the geographical sense, but rather a state of being: an in-between space where the old fades away and the self and the undefined can emerge.
The film will also incorporate excerpts from Simone de Beauvoir's »Das andere Geschlecht« — as a conceptual layer, as a dialogue across time. These fragmentary quotations link the protagonist's personal journey with the theoretical and historical discourse on female identity, authorship, and womanhood as a social construct.
Another key stylistic element of the film is humor. Humor is understood as a language in its own right — as something that connects people, breaks down barriers, and fosters a sense of community. Shared laughter among women often differs from humor patterns that have historically and culturally been shaped by men. In the film, humor is therefore not understood as the opposite of seriousness or theory, but as an artistic tool, a form of resistance, a social practice, and a universally understandable language. Making people laugh becomes a form of communication that functions beyond power structures-a language that can be understood without translation.
The transformative nature of the work is depicted through stark contrasts: harsh light versus diffused light, mechanical sounds versus natural sounds, and so on.