About

Presented in partnership with Brisbane Festival

AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE

In the darkness of a cinema, the audience sits blindfolded. Behind each audience member sits a child, who describes in hushed tones a film they are seeing for the very first time. Accompanied by a soundtrack (which has no dialogue), the whispered descriptions are an attempt by the children to make sense of what they see projected on the screen.

Blind Cinema is a live event by artist Britt Hatzius (DE / UK / BE) where the act of watching a film becomes a shared investment: a collaborative and imaginative act between seeing children and blinded adults.

Britt Hatzius works in film, video, sound and performance. Her work generally refers to or takes the format of the moving image, both in its technical and conceptual form and often explores ideas around language, interpretation and the potential for discrepancies, ruptures, deviations and (mis-) communication.

Her work is shown internationally at performance and media arts festivals, institutions and galleries, including Festival De Keuze and IFFR Rotterdam, Mois Multi Quebec, EXIT Paris, VIA Mons, Bozar Brussels, TBA Portland and COIL New York. Projects include cinematic installation Micro Events (2012) with Tom Kok, interactive performance This Is Not My Voice Speaking (2013) and site-specific installation As Never Before, As Never Again (2014) with Ant Hampton. Her most recent performance Blind Cinema (2015) involves groups of local children describing a movie to a blindfolded audience.

After completing a degree in Fine Art Media at Chelsea College of Art London, she has collaborated with numerous visual artists, filmmakers, performers, theatre directors and sound artists and is engaged in visual-sound collaborations with the collective 'Not Applicable Artists'. Since her MA in Sociology at Goldsmiths University London she has also worked within academic research at Studio INCITE (Critical Enquiry into Ethnography and Technology) and CUCR (Centre for Urban and Community Research).

Participating schools: Cannon Hill State School, Enoggera State School, Springfield Central State School, New Farm State School, Petrie Terrace State School.