Emil · Hartl
A portfolio in twelve descents.
Bachelor — Time-Based
and Interactive Media Art
The camera was
always between us.
For as long as I can remember I have been recording things. Cassette tapes of my own voice at six. A small VHS-C camera at eight, pointed at the dog, the kitchen, my brother. Disposable cameras at family weddings, half of them double-exposed, all of them developed too late.
I like standing in front of the camera, too — for a moment, when the timer beeps and you have ten seconds to decide who you want to be. But I am most at home a step behind it. The lens makes a small, quiet job out of looking, and I love that job.
Different materials, the same question underneath: what is it like to notice something twice.
— E. H., Vienna, April 2026
me_emil
Eight stills from a single forty-minute take. Late at night, one source of light, the camera left to look at me until I forgot it was there.
Orange and blue, eyes barely open. Vienna, 02:14.
A bath, a candle, a held breath.
The synth on standby. Green skin.
Pillow, hair against the cheek.
Eyes, no other geography.
Daylight test, before the dark take.
Looking somewhere a thought has gone.
Out of the face, into the texture.
A summer
underwater
Three weeks on a borrowed waterproof camera and two single-use 35 mm. What I love about analog is not nostalgia — it is the delay.
Underwater, the bay near Vis. The film grain doing what eyes can't.
A head above the surface. Late afternoon, low sun.
Snorkel, mattress, two friends not posing.
A can of beer, a laughing mouth, an inflatable slowly deflating.
A red life ring as a frame, sunglasses as a frame.
A small thing on a hot stone. I am still not sure what it was.
A failed picture I now love — the camera tipped, the sky won.
Sunscreen, late afternoon. The frame I keep when somebody asks what summer is.
Quiet
things
Studies of what one rarely actually looks at — gloves, cutlery, corduroy, a synthesiser, two model cars, a pigeon in an empty room.
Gloves. Pencil on paper · 2023.
Cords, draped on a chair. Pencil · 2023.
Cutlery from the morning table. Pencil · 2023.
Breakfast — toast, butter, a small fly. Oil on board · 2024.
Korg. Oil on wood · 2024.
Two cars from the attic. Oil on board · 2024.
Fourth Floor. The painting that, of all of them, looks back. Oil on canvas · 2024.
Amanitae. Photograph, daylight · 2023.
Falling,
burning
Two prints. Two opposite gestures. One carves the surface away — one wounds it.
A body falls. A wave catches. A ship in the distance keeps going.
The carved pearwood block. Wood says what it wants — one only listens.
After Goethe. Soft-ground & aquatint — eyes opening in the moss.
SGABIT
A made-up word from school — it means nothing. Three painted silks, made on the floor of a room, and a self-published newspaper that disguises them as reportage.
The Teacher. Acrylic on silk · 130 × 110 cm · 2025.
Saint with Banana. 110 × 100 cm · 2025.
Scream. 100 × 100 cm · 2025.
Rinsing,
reading,
the colour leaving.
Stills from the studio. Making a thing and watching it leave belong to the same gesture.
Reading the finished page on the bathroom tiles.
A wall of newsprint, a bare back, a hand pressed flat.
Rinsing the pink dye out, in a sink that will never be the same.
The colour goes down the drain. The picture stays.
concerters
Musicians I know, between songs. The two seconds before the voice has spoken — and the two seconds after it has stopped.
Before the first song.
A scan made on the kitchen table. Dust and all.
Looking down at the strings.
A smile that is not for the audience.
Soundcheck. The room before everyone has arrived.
The breath right before the chorus.
Live, June 2025. Available light, raw file.
The same night. The room after they had gone home.
Afterimage
A record I am writing while making everything else. The image that stays on the retina once the eyes have closed — caught in five songs.
Afterimage
Each prominence is a four-second window into one of the five songs. Press it again, and again.
End of the well.
Emil Hartl · Vienna · Linz
emil.hartl@gmail.com
Application 2026 — Time-Based and Interactive Media Art, Linz