Drawing From Nature

Anyone who feels a shiver run down their spines at the colorfully dazzling collections of dead butterflies attached to boards in museums will likely recognize a persistent unease in Michael Heindl’s Drawing from Nature. It relates to the relationship between humans and so-called nature. In three statically filmed experimental setups, the filmmaker shows various constellations in which human curiosity about the world of birds, plants, and insects leads to destruction: birds that discover actual food in the hand of grain feeding them, plant leaves that are trimmed until they resemble a human arm, and insects that can only be painted accurately when they no longer move. The curiosity here depends primarily on the artistic impulse to capture movements, recognize shapes, and highlight peculiarities. The apparent playfulness of the three episodes fits seamlessly into Heindl’s work, but here too a socially critical approach lurks behind the mischievous fascination. The issue here is the fine line between turning towards the world and the destructive dominance of it. This question doesn’t just concern art. It touches upon the countless wounds in civilization’s treatment of the planet. The title can be understood in both senses of the word “drawing”. We copy from nature, but also extract from it. The fact that in the last episode Heindl ruthlessly reveals the violence used has a lasting effect. At the end, the animated beetle moves in the picture, while the real one lies motionless in front of the camera. Somewhere between living art and dead nature something has been lost, and Heindl asks himself and us just what that is. (Patrick Holzapfel)

Translation: John Wojtowicz