3/60 Trees in Autumn
Bäume im Herbst can be understood as describing two opposite directions – visually, it enacts a conversion of the concrete into abstraction (placing the tree tops against a white background acts like a disruptive force, rupturing any connection with referentiality), while the sound appears to follow the opposite path. As the soundtrack was painted onto the film using ink, it starts off as something abstract that further on gains referentiality and becomes recognizable as thunder. Moreover, the two contrasting movements complement each other and provide the film with a trembling quality.
(Diana Bulzan)
The first embodiment of (a) concept of structural activity in cinema comes in Kren´s Bäume im Herbst, where the camera as a subjective observer is constrained within a systematic or structural procedure, incidentally the precursors of the most structuralist aspect of Michael Snow´s later work. In this film, perception of material relationships in the world is seen to be no more than a product of the structural activity in the work. Art forms experience.
(Malcolm Le Grice)
Kren looks at and simultaneously away from nature. He approaches the trees as an optical experiment, observing them in regard to their abstract value. Their effect upon the senses constitutes what is relevant, in order to be fit into a strict rhythmic and mathematical calculation, without having to consider narrative developement or process. Kren provokes a state in which the eye is overwhelmed by what is seen and defensively attempts to control it. Seeing is ensnared in a competition with what it sees.
(Thomas Trummer)