“Violence was never invisible to me, never hid. It was rather a question of whether one looks. That’s what I want in my cinematic work: take a look. It doesn’t necessarily always require particularly violent images. Violence runs through all facets of society and our lives in it. The brutal is not only revealed where it is obvious. It can lie precisely in the beautiful and quiet – in the non-visibility of violence.“ Luise Mueller

With great care and precise visual and acoustic accents Luise Mueller portrays places and people. What her works have in common is a respectful treatment of the protago nists and their history. In her film language, she pays special attention to details, rhythm and emptiness. In this way, the artist works against the indifference and brutality of every day life. Her basic theme is ambivalence, the inexpressible, the untenable; that for which we cannot find words. Coming from painting – she first made her education as a stage painter in Berlin and later studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna – the gift of composition, the feeling for light and aesthetics are just as important in her films as working between the intellectual and the emotional. In long scenes, quiet montages and spare narratives, Mueller is able to do justice to the depiction of human violence without being bold. Precisely this in-between, the empty spaces, the silent shots reveal themselves more strongly than they could in a purely pictorial medium. With sound design, she develops her own narrative, which she juxtaposes with supposedly empty images.

In Mensch und Maschine (2017), the machine of a textile factory in Marrakech takes center stage. It seems like a kinetic sculpture until the person operating it enters the pictorial space, which is determined by its speed, rhythm, and relentlessness. Thoughts on colonial history intrude, as do thoughts on the self-evidence with which we make use of others.

In the film Staub (2017), the camera lingers longer on one shot. Young people are working on an old, barrack-like building. The dreariness of the weather foreshadows that the place is not positively afflicted. The documentation of the work is repeatedly interrupted by shots showing the current state of the facility. Gently Mueller handles the set pieces of landscape and buildings, leaving room for thoughts. Objectivity always remains in focus. Only shortly before the sixth minute one of two narrative sequences begins, which reveals the location as the former concentration camp Mauthausen. The role of the protagonist is played by the generation that is the last to have contact with contempo rary witnesses of the Second World War.

The current effects of fascist ideas can be found in the film Nördlich von Libyen (2023). It begins with the radio mes sage of a refugee boat asking for help in distress at sea; the image remains black. The film tells the story of Antje and Dariush, who set off on their first of five missions to the Mediterranean Sea with the Iuventa in November 2016. They talk about their missions at sea – prosaic, yet affected. Again and again, their gaze wanders inward. Dariush has been charged with human smuggling in Italy. He faces up to twenty years in prison. He no longer goes on sea rescue missions; the lawyers have advised him against it. In the meantime, he is on Lesbos for three months. At the same time, the residents of Moria are documenting the conditions in Europe‘s largest refugee camp with mobile videos before it was dissolved after a devastating fire. Back in Hamburg, it has been a two-year wait – while the Mediterranean contin ues to become a grave for thousands on their way to Europe.