An Interview with Dagie Brundert

by Olivia Ladanyi // Aug. 1, 2023

Dagie Brundert’s body of work, spanning 60 years, comprises hundreds of experimental Super 8 films and pinhole camera photographs that playfully demonstrate the extent of what is possible with analogue technology. Inspired by the Japanese aesthetic concept of wabi-sabi—which celebrates the imperfect, impermanent and incomplete—Brundert searches for beauty in nature’s imperfections through her films and image-making. For her first comprehensive solo exhibition, ‘Kiss The Moment’, silent green presents Brundert’s most important work in installation form. A pioneer in the production of organic film developers, Brundert uses natural, easily-sourced ingredients to develop her photographs, such as coffee, washing soda, beer, seaweed, tea, coca-cola, rose hip and potato juice. Her pinhole cameras are also made from everyday objects, like coffee, mint and biscuit tins. Ahead of ‘Kiss The Moment,’ Brundert talks to us about her process and aesthetic, and why she hopes the show encourages visitors to go out and play in nature, finding possibilities in chaos and beauty in the banal.

Dagie Brundert; ‘Schmetterlingsküsse / Butterfly Kisses,’ 1998, film still // Courtesy of the artist

Olivia Ladanyi: Your work is radically analogue. What meaning does the analogue nature of your work take on in the age of digitalisation and industrial mass production?

Dagie Brundert: It’s of course a question of aesthetics! I like grains, I like blurred edges, I like deep blacks and washed-out colours. I love miracles that occur in outdated materials, accidents and surprises! And I have the feeling that I understand what I’m doing more when I’m touching matter, whisking silver salts and… I can almost smell it. Super 8 has become quite expensive but I don’t care, my films are short and my approach is totally different compared to video filmmakers: every meter of film material is precious, there is hardly any waste when I start a new project. Same with pinhole photos: one shot and that’s it. It’s all in the moment.

Film still from an old expired GDR ORWO film; wormy structures because of broken gelatine layer

OL: Through your ecological aesthetic, ‘Kiss the Moment’ aims to take a stand for sustainability and question how art reacts to the pressing global crises of our time. How important is incorporating sustainable natural elements in your work and what is the political resonance of this?

DB: After many years of developing the usual toxic way, I wondered if there was an alternative, because it just didn’t feel good anymore. And, suddenly, a new universe opened up! In the end, playing with food totally made sense. What could be more beautiful and powerful than taking the veggie food waste of one person on one day and making one litre of developer to develop one film from it? As far as the political resonance—maybe it’s the hippie in me that feels connected to all that lives and believes in mutual influence—I love to pick local stuff when I’m located somewhere, like a residency in South Sweden. I filmed where my antennae led me, using what grew in my neighbourhood (moss and early rapeseed plants) and in the end I have a potpourri and a good story as a result.

Rosehip soup b&w negative developer

Illy coffee pinhole camera

OL: In your words, ‘Kiss the Moment’ is a “murmuring, humming, chattering” experience. How do the works that were selected for silent green create the feeling of an exhibition brimming with life?

DB: Nature is one of my most highlighted subjects: the wonders of creatures, the magic connection between all that lives, chatters and fades. You will enter the exhibition through a space full of tweeting and whispering, singing beetles, kissing butterflies, colours and glimmer. There will also be a “Hexenküche”: one long, open room with a table with different stages of developer brewing on it. It will smell, it will grow. I will be there stirring the soup, feeding the projector with new film strips, hanging freshly made images on a clothesline.

Dagie Brundert; ‘Nightlight,’ 2009, film still // Courtesy of the artist

OL: ‘Kiss the Moment’ is an invitation to “put out your antennae and to savour the moment.” How does your spontaneous, imperfect, do-it-yourself approach encourage visitors to make something marvellous out of the ordinary and find beauty in the banal?

DB: Do you know about Wabi-Sabi? It’s the “beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete.” When I first stumbled across and read about it, I thought: “Wow. This is me and my work, let me celebrate it and infect others!” This world is so full! There’s an abundance of possibilities in the chaos around you and in the way you look at things. Find beauty in banalities. Go out and play!

Dagie Brundert; ‘Kottbusser Brücke,’ 2016, pinhole photo, 120 x 180 cm // Courtesy of the artist

OL: Your work reflects the guiding idea of silent green’s project Film Feld Forschung. Could you tell us a bit more about the project and its relationship to your work.

DB: We want to remove film from its traditional context and throw it into the Betonhalle, onto the wall, into wormholes and freshly built universes. Film is so much more than a movie in a cinema: it is a field of experimentation. We play with it, we analyse the audio and the visual language, too. We are very much interested in the how and the why, or rather the why-not. You will see and feel how a film or a photo comes to life because, for me, it is very important to spread the scent of freedom, of script-less genesis, an instinctive understanding of life cycles and the joy and creativity of play.