START POINT PRIZE – Prize for emerging artists

Mina Lunzer was nominated for the Vilém Flusser Art and Theory Award in 2010. Her thesis entitled The Cave’s Armor / Die Grenze der Höhle is in a way an unfinished project undergoing a continuous process, consisting of 25 minutes long documentary at the time of the thesis presentation, featuring John Allan Hobson, one of the most renowned sleep and dream researchers in the twentieth century. In her film, Mina Lunzer focuses on the field of physiological sleep and dream research. work she searches for the answers to such questions as: at what epistemological (and historical) point did physiological sleep research transform into psycho-physiological dream research; does the research constitute two perspectives of the mind and body, or, on the contrary, does it help to dissolve them. The film observes Hobson in a residence where he lives with his family. Just as dream research practice was moved to the laboratory, the film mimics the situation in the laboratory by following the main protagonist in the same way as the scholar watches his cats which he uses in his sleep and dream research. The artist is influenced by the work of Harun Farocki with whom she believes in the similarity of the art and cinema space. While processing the researched material she believes in delving further into it together with the viewer. She compares it to a sketch with thin pencil lines – it is searching, questioning, open and fragile. The artist keeps editing the film and thus she changes the story, a story which is based directly on the actual state of her research and the feedback she receives from her audience. (lg)