Peter Wächtler

Peter Wächtler's silent film "Untitled (Vampire)" is a mesmerising portrait of a solipsistic vampire and the secluded life he leads in a castle high in the mountains. In his diaristic accounts, existentialism meets the small comforts of consumption culture in the most bizarre yet plausible manners.

Peter Wächtler's silent film "Untitled (Vampire)" is a mesmerising portrait of a solipsistic vampire and the secluded life he leads in a castle high in the mountains. In his diaristic accounts, existentialism meets the small comforts of consumption culture in the most bizarre yet plausible manners.

A stop-motion animation that dissolves a conversation on friendship, longing and loss into a seamless loop that follows a furry creature paddling through a swampy river scene. The subtitles are neither clearly attributed to the scenery, nor to the characters in it.

Using traditional cell animation with rock and roll soundtrack Far Out depicts the central subject’s departure along a country road, set against a backdrop of moonlit landscapes. The protagonist’s repetitive stasis invokes an ambiguous relationship with acts of progress or withdrawal, as well as our own misplaced desires.

We hear a whole catalogue of technical, moral, and financial instructions, ranging from practical to absurd, each introduced by “It works . . . ,” as in “It works in the shops and in all of the malls; it works when you cut off your microscopic balls. . . . It works if you heat up the nickel, if you save up the dime, and on a blackballer I wasted my prime. . . However, a single glance at the homeless protagonist and his forlorn setting suffices to clarify that none of this advice has worked all that well for him.

Untitled (2013) is Wächtler’s first work using the analogue technique of cell animation. With a loosely connected coupling of sound and image, a rat spends his days in claustrophobic, squalid quarters made of stone and brick. Day after day, the exhausted rat arrives home late evening. Tripping over a carpet, a bowling ball slides off a nearby table to land on his head. After shaking off the impact, he lethargically climbs into bed. The rat tosses and turns, the sun rises. Dragging himself out from beneath a blanket, he places the heavy ball back on the table and slogs off to face the day. The dejected scenario repeats on loop.