Michael Gülzow

What if we could simply move back and forth between news and fictional worlds, be it science fiction films or AI-generated fake realities? Would we even notice, or have these worlds become so indistinguishable that we would consider them all equally true – or fake?

In Michael Gülzow's video installation, which is built around a new three-channel video work, as well as in the trailer he designed for Diagonale '26, the protagonists can not only travel through time, but also effortlessly switch between newscasts, science fiction scenery, and ‘alternative facts’. Through the clever montage of found footage and self-filmed material, the artist dissolves the boundaries between reality and fiction and engages them in a multi-layered and humorous dialogue. He critically examines the tension between contemporary image production (with its rapidly developing technological possibilities) and the media construction of truth (with its frightening strategies of seduction and deception). Through the obvious use of editing and montage in glitch and retro aesthetics, he creates no illusions, but rather reveals the mechanisms of media manipulation and deconstructs post-factual narratives through the self-empowerment of the protagonists.

The ambivalence of visual proof of truth and the construction of (fictional) realities lies in the very nature of film itself. Consistently and ironically, it is precisely in this medium that Gülzow, in view of the perceived loss of control in a hyper-medialised world, asks whether we still form our own image of the world or whether we have long since surrendered this competence to the media and artificial intelligence.

Michael Gülzow, born in Kiel in 1982, studied media art and experimental film at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Constanze Ruhm and Harun Farocki, as well as at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel under Stephan Sachs and Else Gabriel. His feature film debut, the mockumentary Der tote Winkel der Wahrnehmung (The Blind Spot of Perception), was awarded the Prize for Innovative Cinema at the Diagonale 2025. He lives in Vienna as an artist and filmmaker.