DONALD JUDD and I

The title of the film indicates a relationship, or what is more, trust and intimacy: "Donald Judd and I" is like something said in passing and only up close. But in fact and from the very start, Sasha Pirker´s four-minute miniature DONALD JUDD and I encapsulates manifold relationships and shifting dynamics.

In terms of narrative appearances, at first the "I" of the title is attributed to a female voice off-screen. It belongs to Marianne Stockebrand. The woman who became Judd´s life-long companion is heard recalling their common visit to the Schindler House at King´s Road in Los Angeles in 1988 - or maybe it was 1989? Meanwhile, the camera maps out an entirely other (contemporary) space flooded with light via static and initially, intensely fragmented shots. It is the Whyte Building on Oak Street in Marfa, Texas – part of the Chinati Foundation Judd established and Stockebrand managed many years following his death. The room in LA is reimagined, where Donald Judd discovered Schindler´s furniture and quickly struck a bargain for the production of a complete set. The memory of that place is as if superimposed upon the room we see on screen, in which the idiosyncratically angular furniture of the Austrian architect now embarks on entirely new relations with early paintings by the minimalist artist. The presumably "exclusive" relationship between Donald Judd and "I" consequently opens into a multi-faceted dialogue, naturally including Sasha Pirker. Last but not least, DONALD JUDD and I tells of a filmmaker´s encounter with an (art)historically loaded location, it is a "small story" woven of individual narrative threads that ultimately merge in a single space. (Esther Buss)

Translation: Eve Heller


Other than Heinz Emigholz and his systematic research of the work of Rudolph Schindler, Sasha Pirker is more interested in the random, hard to believe stories about the Vienna-born architect. In case of this movie it is the relationship of minimalism artist Donald Judd and Schindler, who has built a refuge for Judd in Marfa, Texas, in the Seventies. (production notes)