A storm is brewing!

Comradettes! Comrades!

You have not heard from us in a while! It is time to break the silence, as we feel a storm brewing! We feel the tender leaves of revolution move with the wind! We hear the whispers: “When? Where? When? Where? When? Where?”

First: Don’t be too existential, Western money-laundry folks!
And second: Your investment is still working! “Sierra Zulu” is still on track.
But it resembles more closely a classic “5-year plan” than originally thought.

We are still accumulating “the Capital”. And our primary problem is: We only have one more try at the Austrian Film Institute to get their funding. Oh Lenin! Oh noes! And we don’t want to waste that last precious try! The jury was not keen in giving us their filthy money, because monochrom has not produced a feature film before, and Johannes “Ze Hawk” Grenzfurthner has not directed a feature film before. Reluctant jury, why can’t you be like Stachanov!

Anyways, we don’t want to waste our last chance to get A FAT AMOUNT of government bills for Sierra Zulu, that’s why monochrom and “Ze Hawk” decided to create one or two other films (like “The Gstetten Saga: The Rise of Echsenfriedl”) before re-applying. We want to show off! Stun them! Win at their own game! So: no worries. “Sierra Zulu” will be made. And if you consider inflation, you get way more out than you put in. (Or is it the other way around?)

Greetings! And: Fuck Putin!

Link

Sierra Zulu @ Think Out Loud / Crowdfunding Session

Director Johannes Grenzfurthner will talk about Sierra Zulu and the Kickstarter campaign at Think out Loud! 2 / Crowdfunding in Attnang-Puchheim, Austria.

Johannes Grenzfurthner etwa hat seinen Film Sierra Zulu über Crowdfunding teil-finanziert. Über 50.000 Dollar sammelte er auf diese Weise über die US-Plattform Kickstarter von den Fans ein, eine Summe, die zuvor noch kaum ein heimisches Projekt erreicht hat. Er wird über seine Kampagne berichten und unter anderem auch die Frage beantworten, warum er nicht eine der deutschsprachigen Crowdfunding-Plattformen dafür ausgewählt hat.

April 25, 2013; 6 PM at Technologiezentrum Attnang-Puchheim, Austria.

Link

Torture Whispers! Joe Magazine publishes Soviet interrogation of Johannes Grenzfurthner

Our director Johannes Grenzfurthner was captured by Soviet Unterzoegersdorf Military Intelligence, brought to an undisclosed basement without toilet and questioned about Sierra Zulu’s production status. So much can be said: SUZ Officer Moloshnikov was not happy…
The interrogation transcript was published in German in the magazine Joe.

Es stinkt nach Urin, Angst, Lügen und Wahrheit. Der Ort: ein karger Verhörraum. Die Protagonisten: Ein Offizier und Johannes Grenzfurthner, der Initiator des Film-Projektes Sierra Zulu. Ein Freigeist, dem seine Vision einer sowjetischen Mikrorepublik bis in die Realität gefolgt ist – Ein Interview der etwas anderen Art.

Text by Hubertus J. Schwarz & Johannes Grenzfurthner.
Photographs by Gerulf Dösinger.

Link to PDF version of interview

Futurezone interview about monochrom — and Sierra Zulu

“Wir sind Nerds, die in der Kunst gelandet sind”, sagen Johannes Grenzfurthner und Günter Friesinger von monochrom. Das neunköpfige Kunst-, Theorie- und Bastelkollektiv feiert noch bis Ende April im Wiener Musa seinen 20. Geburtstag. In der “Die waren früher auch mal besser” betitelten Ausstellung blickt monochrom auf ein bewegtes Schaffen zurück, das von Cyberpunk-Fanzines über Videos, Theaterstücke, Musicals, Perfomances und Konferenzen reicht. Die futurezone hat mit Grenzfurthner und Friesinger über Nerdtum, Hedonismus, Technologie und Crowdfunding gesprochen.

Link

Earthmoving @ TEDxVienna 2012

Comrades! Comradettes!
Johannes Grenzfurthner presented Sierra Zulu at TEDxVienna 2011.
He will return for TEDxVienna 2012 to give an update and screen Earthmoving — Sierra Zulu’s short film prequel (featuring Jeff Ricketts, Martin Auer).

TEDxVienna 2012 @ Odeon, Taborstraße 10, 1020 Vienna, Austria.
November 3, 2012.

Sierra Zulu: Johannes Grenzfurthner at Duncan/Channon in SFO

Director Johannes Grenzfurthner is guest star at Duncan/Channon’s Toast of the Tip!

He’s an artist, writer, curator, director, professor, all-around instigator, and founder of Monochrom, the notorious Viennese art/technology/philosophy powerhouse. His projects have been featured in The New York Times, Der Spiegel, San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, Slashdot, Boing Boing, LA Times, NPR, Gizmodo, Wired. He (or his lookalike Comrade Chrusov) have been spotted at SXSW, TEDxVienna, Maker Faire, Google’s Tech Talks, Ars Electronica, Mozilla Drumbeat Barcelona and underground hacker conferences around the world. From translating dense political philosophy into internet memes to composing pop musicals about banking software to running the first (and, inevitably, leading) festival concerned with cocktail robotics, Johannes and Monochrom constantly seek the right medium for their message(s). Among other projects, they’ve established a one-baud semaphore line through the streets of San Francisco, buried couples alive in plush surveillant coffins and cracked the hierarchies of the art market with a series of elaborate pranks. Now they are taking on the silver screen with the Kickstarter-funded story of Sierra Zulu, the last Soviet micro-state.

As our first Toast of the Tip honoree of the fall, Grenzfurthner will share his global adventures in subverting subversion and discuss some of the oddities of storytelling and filmmaking in a digital age.

Wednesday, 26 September 2012

Beer, wine, snacks, 5:30 pm

Speaker, 6:00 pm

RSVP REQUIRED

There will be a list. To be included, RSVP by the morning of 26th to: moc.nonnahcnacnudnull@pvsr

Sierra Zulu at Journey Vienna 2012

Soviet Unterzoegersdorf’s Armed Force(s) will take part in the massive street game Journey to the End of the Night. And they will make your life (secular) hell!
It is time that the Western players face a real challenge!

The city spreads out before you. Rushing from point to point, lit by the slow strobe of fluorescent buses in dark streets. Stumbling into situations for a stranger’s signature. Fleeing unknown pursuers, breathing hard, admiring the landscape and the multitude of worlds hidden in it.

For one night, drop your relations, your work and leisure activities, and all your usual motives for movement and action, and let yourself be drawn by the attractions of the chase and the encounters you find there.

Be prepared for a game of epic proportions!

Mark the date! Saturday, September 8, 2012 — in Vienna!

Journey to the End of the Night / Page
Journey to the End of the Night / FB event

Sierra Zulu: Obtain The T-Shirt!

Interested individual! As you might remember, we created a limited set of t-shirts for our Kickstarter campaign. But the masses were in uproar!
They were shouting, tweeting and faxing:

“We want textiles too!”
“To hell with limitations!”
“Make them available for everyone!”

“Lower quality! Higher affordability!”

It is our job to (randomly) obey the dicatorship of the (unfree) market and are happy being able to announce: “Get our fresh new Sierra Zulu t-shirt!”
It is daring, yet pleasing! Nothing fancy, but still full of distinction!

Austria: EUR 18 (plus EUR 4 shipping & handling)
Europe: EUR 18 (plus EUR 8 shipping & handling)
USA, Venezuela, New Caledonia and whatever else there is: EUR 18 (plus EUR 12 shipping & handling)

Order via sierra-zulu AT monochrom.at (and pay via Paypal).