Matthias Müller

Matthias Müller works as a film, video and photo artist in Cologne and Bielefeld. His works can be read as an unwritten history of the experimental cinema in Germany, which begins with his super-8 experiments in Bielefeld and is far from over with his international exhibitions, for he has never been known to follow a linear route. His twisted paths lead him to take cinema as the main point of reference for the audio-visual arts. Film is the primordial experience he returns to time and again. Matthias Müller grew up in the West Germany of the sixties. In 1985 he founded the Bielefeld super 8 film co-op Alte Kinder together with Christiane Heuwinkel and six other film makers, “turning their council houses into film studios,” as a newspaper put it. At that time he began his close co-operation with the composer Dirk Schaefer, who operated a toy sampler as a counterpart to Müller’s super-8 camera. In the nineties, Müller mainly worked in the 16mm-format. The collective consciousness, cinematic conventions, our visual culture and his own personal memories were addressed in beautiful short films. Ever since the Phoenix Tapes from 1999, Müller has been co-operating with Christoph Girardet in common projects, now supported by digital techniques. This Hitchcock work was Müller’s breakthrough in the art world. Müller’s films, video installations and photographic works have been presented by important festivals and museums all over the world. Since 2003, Matthias Müller has also been working as a professor in experimental film for the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne.