styx

Whenever there´s music
The Devil kicks
He don´t allow music
By the river Styx

(Mel Torme - Lyrics from "Sing You Sinners")

More Texts

Viennale Katalogtext 2019

Störung ist Programm in den Videoarbeiten von Roisz/Kovačič. Eine Farbe wird von der anderen konterkariert, das Bild regelmäßig vom Sound gepeitscht und gnadenlos vorangetrieben, die Abstraktion konkretisiert und munter re-abstrahiert, ja selbst der MPEG-Code ist vor Sabotage nicht sicher. In STYX werden wir durch einen zunächst gemächlich hypnotischen Strom, der in tremolierendes Glissando mündet, gen Unterwelt gezogen; SURGE kracht grauenerregend rhythmisch in Form eines metamorphen Geisterschiffs dem Höllenschlund entgegen und AQUAMARINE, so idyllisch der Titel klingt, vermag Schlagseite Richtung Seekrankheit auszulösen! Wer für seine Sinne einen Hafen sucht in dieser audiovisuellen Reisen, wird umso eher im Inferno landen. (Roman Scheiber)

Viennale catalogue text 2019

The work of Billy Roisz, combining the media of sound and vision, aims for fusion, but also a fracture. The image and the music (often a “noise music”) always go in sync, frame by frame and pulse by pulse; and yet they never easily or comfortably fuse together – and one never simply generates or illustrates the other. In AQUAMARINE (made with Dieter Kovačič), the sea is rendered as no longer a beautiful, placid image but a fearsome, stuttering mass of energies, prodded or poked by Mopcut’s harsh music. STYX, with its rolling abstract lines and shapes of light, evokes fleeting details from the techno-graphic world of Godard’s ALPHAVILLE, but in colour, until the sea once again insists as an elusive, intermittently glimpsed background. SURGE (also made with Kovaačič) places us somewhere between figuration and abstraction: its displayed forms defy full visual comprehension, as they stretch and snap in strict accordance with the complex beats and sheets of sound created by schtum. Only very lazy critics could label Roisz’s complex, enthralling pieces as “music video”; she is, in fact, taking us into a new realm where image and sound achieve an unstable, forever disintegrating synthesis. (Adrian Martin)
Orig. Title
styx
Year
2019
Country
Austria
Duration
7 min
Director
Billy Roisz
Category
Experimental, music video
Orig. Language
No Dialogue
Downloads
styx (Image)
styx (Image)
styx (Image)
Credits
Director
Billy Roisz
Concept & Realization
Billy Roisz
Music
Matija Schellander
Available Formats
Digital File (prores, h264)
Festivals (Selection)
2019
Wien - Viennale - Int. Filmfestwochen
2020
Palic - Festival of European Film
Grimstadt - Kortfilmfestivalen