* Birgit Munsch-Klein
As Belinda Sallin called and asked me whether I wanted to edit her film on HR Giger, I was both pleased and tentative at once. Since I had planned a studio phase for this period myself, I wanted to be sure that HR Giger was still relevant and worth encountering. Belinda told me about the film she wanted to make and the exhibition in Linz, which was still open for a couple of days. When I saw the pictures by HRG on the Lentos Museum homepage, it was immediately plain to me that he is still relevant and topical, that I wanted to see more of his work and edit this film.
It was only one picture, but in that picture alone I saw something other than that which I knew of HRG. It was bright and of a strange, powerful and absolutely idiosyncratic beauty. My curiosity had been awoken.
No matter who I talked to about this work, everyone had their own small story about HR Giger. At the same time I sensed a sort of barrier towards his work in almost everyone, a barrier that seems to stand in the way of the work. It was this that we wanted to change. We wanted to make a film showing HRG as a person and as an artist in a radically different way so as to open a vista across his work. We were pursuing this with all our strength when the news of his death befell us.
We were shocked. Belinda and I had already been editing the film for months, and during this time HRG had grown much closer to me - as if I had met him many times. Our grief due to his death, and the fact that our most significant viewer, HR Giger, would be missing, paralysed us. And I was tormented by seeing the media reports in which the old and traduced description of his work was repeated again and again. The barriers were manifest once more. But we knew that we were in possession of something else!
Birgit Munsch-Klein, editing
Birgit Munsch-Klein, editing