Born in 1930 in Vienna. 1948-1954 studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (with Wotruba). 1948 first plastic works, exhibitions since 1949. 1952-1954 study tours to Milan and Paris (Grande Chaumière with Ossip Zadkine). 1957-1958 guest student at ITHEC film college (Paris). Has studied kinetics, rhythmic interferences and problems of optical structure since 1954. Film work since 1957. From 1960 work on semantic infra- and metastructures. From 1965 on studied perception psychology at Vienna University. Awarded the Theodor-Körner Prize in 1967. 1969 Prix Mondial du Collège International des Calculatrices Electroniques et des Recherches Visuelles, Zagreb. 1970-1973 Professor of Painting and Aesthetic Theory, Academy of Fine Arts, Hamburg. 1971-1972 lectured at American universities. Since 1973 free-lance work in Vienna. Awarded the Annual Prize of Formative Art of Zentralsparkasse Vienna in 1976. 1980-1981 worked at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. 1987-1988 Visiting Professor at Hessian University Kassel, FRG. Representative of Austria at the "Olympiad of Art" at Seoul, Korea. Awarded the "Würdigungspreis für Filmkunst" in March 1992.
"Together with Herbert Vesely, Peter Kubelka, Ferry Radax and Kurt Kren, Marc Adrian belongs to the first generation of avant-garde filmmakers in Austria, who, after 1950, developed the structural film, mostly based on their personal financial means. In the beginning, Marc Adrian worked with sculpture, mobiles and semantic structural dispersions. He used the results of this research in filmmaking. Since 1957 he has made some sets of short films and two half-hour long films. He has worked for years on some films that last only a few minutes. Now Adrian makes his first long film 'Pueblo,' which is a comparative study on white and red Indian thinking." - from an interview for ORF by Ernst Schmidt, Jr., 1983
Filmography: Filmblock 0 (series): Black Movie I (1957); 1. MaI 1958; Wo-da-vor-bei (1958); Schriftfilm (1959); Black Movie II (1957-1959); Filmblock I (series): Random; Text I; Orange (1962-1964); Go; Text II (1962-1964); Text III (1962-in progress); Wege zum Wissen (1963); Mund (1965); Total (1968); Info (1968); Festival 200, Kopenhagen 69; Weisse und schwarze Schatten (1969); Theoria (1969-1971); Filmblock III: Bluemovie; Black Movie III; Uarei (1969-1977); Center 80; Astrid (1981); Rock (1981); Der Regen (1957-1983); Farewell to Kurt (1987); Pueblo (Part I)(1989); Stadt-Werk-Statt (1990); Fragment 1 (1987-in progress); Kiln (1993).
Direction (Idea, Editing Scheme): Marc Adrian; Camera: Kurt Kren; Editing: Kurt Kren and Marc Adrian. Rhythmic montage of monochrome colors after exact frame plans.
1957, 16mm, b&w/color/si, 198sec
Direction and editing: Marc Adrian; Camera: Kurt Kren.
1958, 16mm, b&w/si, 165sec
Camera: Kurt Kren. The first text film of Marc Adrian.
1958, 16mm, b&w/si, 70sec
Idea around 1954.
1959, 16mm, b&w/si, 328sec
FILMBLOCK 0 contains the first experiments, which were made by Kurt Kren and myself to compose films the same way as works of the fine arts were composed by us, that means following pre-existing formal partitures (BLACK MOVIE I, 1ST OF MAY 1958). It also contains my first films which link visual and semantic structures and show some of the beginnings of structural film in Austria. (M.A.) The teamwork of Marc Adrian and Kurt Kren lasted for three films in 1957-1959. "[A]ctually it was Kren's idea to translate the structures of methodic inventionism into films." Together they designed diagrams and partitures. Besides BLACK MOVIE the films DAS WALK (8mm, 3m) and 1ST OF MAY 1958 were made this way. ... (Quotations from W. Lehner, "Beginnings of Structural Film in Austria," 1985)
1957-1959, 16mm, b&w/si, 16m, $50
1963, 35mm, b&w/so, 154sec
1964, 35mm, b&w/so, 148sec
1964, 35mm, b&w/so, 220sec
ORANGE will be distributed as the last film of FILMBLOCK I.
1962-1964, 16mm, b&w/so, 3m
"FILMBLOCK I contains all those films which I made between 1962 and 1964. They are - as most of my works - based on the operational modus of 'methodic inventionism,' which means they follow a pre-constructed device. ... In RANDOM I generated a true mathematical defined program of randomness, because no artist can produce aleatoric happenings by himself, even if he produces 'unconscious' happenings. The films TEXT I and TEXT II are a mere permutation; TEXT I results from a memory program of a computer. The words were chosen by the challenge that they can be read in English and German alike with no change of meaning. GO is another theme of permutation. It shows clearly how meaning in the consciousness of the spectator generates 'by itself,' based on a pure formalistic device. ORANGE, determined by a random generated scheme of free visual and verbal associations, is a montage that circulates round the idea and the picture of an orange." - Marc Adrian in a radio interview, SF, 1970
1962-1964, 16mm, b&w/so, 17m, $50
Script: Marc Adrian (after his play "Rain" 1957); Camera: Marc Adrian, Moucle Blackout, Kurt Kren; Editing: Marc Adrian; Soprano: Nina J. Hanson.
"Marc Adrian's film RAIN is an new result of his poetic-structural technique worked out for long years. Starting points are some superficially unlinked pensive symbolical sequences. Adrian, who invariably makes his camera - and labwork by himself, solarises, filters and alienates the frames during multiple copying and then splices the shots together in different lengths. Out of the repetitions and variations a frame of mind is transmitted that cannot be expressed in words: to my interpretation the process of aging is ritualised in this film." - Dóra Maurer ("Der junge österreichische Film," Filmkultura XXI/2, 1985, Budapest, Hungary)
"This film went with me for more than 25 years. I started it around 1957, together with Kurt Kren who did part of the camera work and contributed many ideas at that time. ... The basic text was a dramatic play that I finished (roughly outlined) in about 1957, and at the same time I started the cinema version of it. ... The existing text and also the rhythmic structure I put into coincidence to a visual scheme and the meaning of the shots - as far as I could not avoid meaning at all - I set in a contradictory context to the spoken words. With regard to the contents, RAIN probably is the most personal film I have made till now and I feel it to be an explanation for myself about me and the world I have to live in. ... The protest, which I do raise here, is my objection against a so called 'objective' reality - it has to be decoded by the spectator in the same personal way." - from a taped interview with C. Eisendraht, Washington, 1983
1983, 16mm, color/so, 30m, $90