Born in Munich, Germany.
Lives and works in Berlin.
Awards |
|
| 2002 | Alfred Bauer Prize, Berlinale Film Festival, Germany |
Solo Exhibitions (selection) |
|
| 2016 | Christopher Roth & Arno Brandlhuber: Legislating Architecture Schweiz, GTA Exhibitions ETH Zürich |
| 2011 | The 80*81 findings, 2081 (with Georg Diez), Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich |
| 2007 | RothStauffenberg, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN (with Franz Stauffenberg) |
Projects and Group Exhibitions (selection) |
|
| 2018 | Paul Hance in Praise of Shadows, Glass Cabinet, Berlin |
| 2016 | GRÜN STÖRT. Im Fokus einer Farbe, MARTa, Herford |
| Reporting from the Front, Biennale Architettura 2016, Venice (with Arno Brandlhuber) | |
| DISCREET, 9th Berlin Biennale, Berlin (in collaboration with Alexander Martos and Armen Avanessian) | |
| Artists Films at Kino International, Berlin | |
| Between Frames, Fahrbereitschaft, Berlin | |
| CONCRETE YET UNSTABLE, Metropolis Kino, Hamburg | |
| 2015 | Kidnapping Mozart, Theater Bremen (with Franz von Stauffenberg), Bremen |
| 2013 | Mahagonny ist überall und Chefsessel ab 59 €, Theater Bremen (curated) |
| 2008 | all inclusive, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (with Franz Stauffenberg) |
| 2007 | Made in Germany, Sprengel Museum, Hannover (with Franz Stauffenberg) |
| 2006 | Modus, Neue Kunst Halle, St. Gallen (with Franz Stauffenberg) |
| Anonymous, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (with Franz Stauffenberg) | |
| Ballermann. Die Ausstellung, Kunsthalle zu Kiel (with Franz Stauffenberg) | |
| See History, Schätze bilden, Kunsthalle zu Kiel (with Franz Stauffenberg) | |
Films |
|
| 2017 | Blow Out (blu), 10 min |
| 2016 | DISCREET, 30 min (based on a secret service by Alexander Martos and Armen Avanessian) |
| The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger, 90 min, with Tilda Swinton, Colin MacCabe, and Bartek Dziadosz | |
| Legislating Architecture, 30 min film (in collaboration with Arno Brandlhuber) | |
| Legislating Architecture Schweiz, 50 min (in collaboration with Arno Brandlhuber) | |
| Spring, 20 min (as part of The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger, with Colin MacCabe, Tilda Swinton, Bartel Dziadosz) (Berlinale Special, 2016) | |
| Blow Out, 10 min | |
| Hyperstition, 108 min film (in collaboration with Armen Aveanessian) | |
| 2015 | anna+3, 20 min (Vera Lehndorff and Christopher Roth) |
| AnnA, 14 min (Vera Lehndorff and Christopher Roth) | |
| Hawaii ’962036, 7:02 min | |
| 2014 | Anti-Villa, 8 min film (in collaboration with Arno Brandlhuber) |
| 2013 | Mozartbique, feature film (in collaboration with Franz von Stauffenberg) |
| 2002 | Baader, feature film, Berlinale competition–Alfred Bauer prize for “opening new perspectives on cinematic art” |
Christopher Roth’s practice may be best understood as a kind of proactive intellectual scholarship that combines the factual and fictitious, with both analytic and poetic qualities.
Roth’s work seeks to understand how information, words, pictures and ideas are received, travel and are mediated at a constantly accelerating pace. Since the 1990s, Roth has focused on the “emptiness” of single images and certain generic imagery that surround us. These images only accrue meaning in context—a function easily manipulated by the mass media. This knowledge — acquired and practiced as an accomplished film editor and director of feature films, and given theoretical underpinnings by his engagement with cultural history and philosophy—informs his entire practice.
His major research project 80*81 with Georg Diez, for example, sought to reconstruct events in the period from January 1980 to December 1981 as evidence of important paradigmatic cultural and historical shifts. These were chronicled in eleven books assembled from contemporary images and texts, and interviews the authors undertook with contemporary witnesses, filmmakers and philosophers (among others). In addition, the project was presented at elaborately staged congresses and theater performances.
In an additional volume, 2081, the authors constructed a future that, in turn, looked back to their 80*81 project as paradigmatic.
Roth’s films also excel at channeling a characteristically voracious intake of images and ideas, giving them a visual equivalent without imposing an order, which he considers arbitrary by definition. Instead, his work relies on an active, engaged audience to draw its own inferences.
Since the early aughts, projects increasingly experiment with the dissolution of linear time, posing an entirely fluid concept of past, present and future: fictionalizing the past (Baader, 2002), re-creating the future (Mozartbique, 2007–13, with Franz Stauffenberg), looking back from the year 2081 (2081 and 80*81, 2010–13, with Georg Diez), or reconstructing in 2026 the formation of a philosophical discourse that has since radically altered the world (Hyperstition, 2016, with Armen Avanessian).
