For the subculture scene of the s, working with a Super 8 camera offered a largely free field of experimentation.
While the film productions of DEFA, the state-owned film studio in the German Democratic Republic GDR , were monitored by the government and modern video technology was not available to private individuals for economic and political reasons, the official art and culture policy did not consider Super 8 to be an artistic medium.
Penck, who lived in Dresden at the time, was one of the first artists to turn to Super 8 technology starting in the mids. In the s, a virtual boom in narrow film began among the younger generation of people born in the GDR around These artists worked in an intermedial manner and pursued an experimental handling of film material. Films were painted, scratched, and cut up and shown as performative stagings with lots of improvisation.
The film aesthetic and the free, at times uninhibited handling of Super 8 films was strongly influenced by the quality of the technology that was available. While the cameras were affordableβa Quarz camera could be purchased for roughly GDR Marks 3 βthey had a clockwork motor for transporting the film, whereby only thirty seconds at a time could be recorded and the speed of the film transport slowed down after twenty seconds.
It was, however, only possible to obtain slide film, which could only be copied with a poor quality. The images either had to speak for themselves or were presented along with cassettes or live music played back in parallel.
