THE ALEPH

Aleph or Alef (א), is the rst letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the number 1 in Hebrew. Its esoteric meaning in Judaic Kabbalah, as denoted in the theological treatise Bahir, relates to the origin of the universe, the “primordial one that contains
all numbers
In Borges’ story, the Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping, or confusion.

Festival Screenings:

2017 Under the Radar Awards Vienna
2017 Boston Sci Fi Film Festival - Best Animation FX Award
2017 Philip K Dick Sci - FI Film Festival - New York
2016 Philip K Dick Sci - FI Film Festival - Köln
2016 Best Austrian Animation - One Day Festival Vienna
2016 Heritage Gallery, Queen Anne Court, University of Greenwich - Collabocracy -

I started documenting this maze of course by taking photos of it.. The more I documented the site, more it became fictional to me.. the more I read about the site the more my interest grew about the woods of Gallitzinberg. If I am not wrong, as much as I researched and read, the site was used as place of communication by Baldur Von Schirach during the war time documented in the book of Alexander Haide - Der Schirach Bunker. A huge underground labyrinth  that goes all the way to the first district of Vienna which is about couple of kilometers, Alexander additionally tells that there somewhere in the underground bunker must be the art collection and treasuries of Schirach. And art collection under the wood…Super sci-fi like story.. Similar to the book, I began with the process of documenting the site with my own way of doing it. the second time I was on the site, I went there with my filming camera and sound recorders to capture the atmosphere around the very particular element which I was fascinated with, the One Man Bunker.. I kind of sensed my intuition that I was going to make a short fictional film out it. Because For me Film as media is the best way of creating freedom, surprising yourself with unexpected imagery, to merge many unrelated stories, to abstract history, to create future, or to tell a story that is already told… I thought using this  massive two of the human sized concrete body would give me so much freedom in a way that I could tell a story. One has one entrance which is about 70-80 cms tall, the second one has two of them. Both is made to capsulate a  human body with 4 openings each positioned in height of a human eye height, 4 different horizontal stripe opening to the woods, 4 gaze  where one has panoramic view from. Kind of a little panopticon to its nature. A point in which one has no action, no influence on the site, only a standing point which gives you a choice of observation. A portal to both to the history and the future. This reminded me the story of the Aleph by Borges in which he talk about a point in cellar where everything can be observed without any blur or any confusion. The third I was going to visit the site, I kind of already knew what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to visualize the story of Aleph by Borges on this site, with this very particular weird architectural element, the One Man Bunker.

ADATO MAGAZIN INTERVIEW

You would wander in the woods and step on a corner of a collapsed bunker, or all of a sudden you would be welcomed by an entrance of a bunker appearing to you behind a tree branch which gave me the strong feeling of walking literally on top of  an history that one doesn’t have any more access to…and incredible feeling in mid winter, being completely all alone in the nature that is occupied and layered with many stories. Searching for the Aleph