Her latest film project "Empty the pond to get the fish" works with the camera in an entirely new way. Runa Islam "writes" with a 35 mm camera in space, moving with it to write huge invisible letters, which eventually produce imaginary words and then a sentence. Culminating in the sentence "Empty the pond to get the fish", a quotation from famous director Robert Bresson. The situation that this film takes the viewer to is surprisingly tense. Although the continually moving camera captures large parts of the filmed space, the viewer still only gets glimpses of something, invoking curiosity, questions. It takes time to put the overall picture together and even then only roughly, like some jigsaw puzzle image, some bits of which we have lost. Runa Islam uses the spacious exhibition premises of Zwangerhaus in Vienna, unused for several years but formerly home to the Museum of the 20th Century, as a kind of "writing board". Through the camera visitors have the chance to witness the structure of the space, the details of glazed walls, the many windows, but also staged antiquated elements - pictures on the walls, on the ground, or works of art wrapped in packages and marked "fragile". Through this work Runa Islam makes the audience want to look just for the sake of looking

Published on occasion of an exhibition held at Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, May 9-July 13, 2008 and at White Cube, Hoxton Square, London, Sept. 4-Oct. 4, 2008.