Irm Sommer

Railway-related documentary covering modern railway systems, museum railways and their facilities as well as items on model railway layouts. Politics and criticism is not left out; the series reports on closures, controversial model ideas, delays to reconstruction plans or smart commuter transport concepts.

A performance of Hermann Nitsch's "7th Abreaction Action", which was initially banned by police, is put on the following morning instead. The action consists of gutting a lamb, pouring the innards over a recumbent woman, mating with a dildo, crucifixion and a concluding scuffle. The action is accompanied by electric organ, percussion and recorded music.

Super obscure experimental short film. Very raw and primitive, it features a great soundtrack made of amazing psychedelic abstract electronic music (the song is “I Of IV” by electronic music pioneer Pauline Oliveros), which is probably what makes this short some kind of mesmerizing experience

Celebrates the aesthetics of the sex act in sharp white photography.

Structuralized segmentation of body fragments, in various sequential order juxtaposed against the verbal reading of the people’s names. Fragments of heads, backs, knees, genitals, etc. A demystification of the body as such, is the sought for effect.

A film by Ed & Irm Sommer

FRG 1969 · R+B+K: Irm & Ed Sommer · 9 min.

(1969/70, 5 min)

This film summarises a 10-minute material action by Günter Brus that he performed as a prelude to Hermann Nitsch’s ‘7th Abreaktionsspiel’ on February 28, 1970, in Aktionsraum 1 in Munich. Günter Brus, dressed in women’s underwear, cries out, puts his feet into a bucket full of some liquid, writes on the floor with chalk and scarifies his upper legs.

An erotic composition whose title alludes to the early abstract films of Hans Richter. Two pairs of women’s hands with painted nails stroke and manipulate a vagina in a geometrical, rhythmical game; in between, there is the playing of the hands in hair and fixed compositions of hands and vagina. Monotonous, technical music diminishes the sexual stimulation.

Irm and Ed Sommer portray 15 artist friends, always filming the same body parts in identical order much in the way a police records department might: feet, knees, genitals, chest, face. At the end, each person signs on a board. Sublime quotes about art and artists contrast with the sight of the naked people, some of them smoking or playing with their genitals.