In the exhibition and screen project “Poor Man’s Expression” since early 2006 Martin Ebner and Florian Zeyfang have been exploring the fluid transitions between experimental film and fine art, often with the focus on the productions of the 1960s and 1970s avant-garde film movement. Here it was often film artists working in the field of fine art who set the tone. The showings of these films then often took place in improvised art galleries – with an infrastructure and character that is not comparable to present-day cinema.

In the course of the development of environments and happenings in the mid-1960s the concept of the Expanded Cinema cropped up – and, interestingly, in these realisations of a spatially and conceptually expanded film and performance practice the cinema came back into contact with its beginnings in the 19th century, the magic show, the performative act in itself, which took place in a special, mysterious or tension-charged atmosphere.

Currently the moving image is assuming a multitude of new, digital manifestations, previously unknown forms of projection, reception and distribution are establishing themselves. But at the same time a cultural normalisation process can be seen, for example in relation to questions of formats, the representation of external reality and the dominance of psychological anthropomorphic movements.

Based on film excerpts and considerations by film-makers, in his presentation Martin Ebner seeks to pursue individual aspects of an extended, non-representative and peripheral concept of cinema, with its centre between inside and outside, comparable with a covered road – an urban, changing site of non-relation, of simultaneous absence and presence, of incidental attention. Afterwards there is a short programme with a selection of video works by Martin Ebner lasting from 30 seconds to 15 minutes.