Max Philipp Schmid was born in Basel, Switzerland in 1962. After studies in art history he qualified as a visual arts teacher at Basel’s Arts and Design School. He now works as an independent director and video-maker and since 1990 has devoted himself to creating experimental films, shorts, musical films and animation. His videos are accounts of feelings and situations no longer free of ambiguity, of bodies in search of equilibrium. Ambivalent moments, otherwise serving no purpose than that of a brief transition, become permanent. Although he typically shoots in a studio with actors, Schmid is less interested in the theatrical staging of a feeling than in his ability to use video technique to interpolate and fragment images, and with them personages, and thus propel them into his trade- mark destabilized state.

His works and installations have been featured among other places at the Swiss Pavilion at Expo Zaragoza 2008, plug in Basel, ZKM Karlsruhe, the Swiss Institute New York, the Museum für Gegen- wartskunst Basel, the Kunsthaus Baselland and numerous festivals in Europe, Asia and North Ameri- ca. Several of his videos have been the recipients of distinctions, including the Golden Spire Award (Golden Globe Festival San Francisco), the Prix FNAC (Videoformes Clermont-Ferrand, France), the Prix Européen de la Création (Estavar-Llivia, Spain), the Swiss Award (Videoex Zurich) and the Award of the Canton of Lucerne (Viper Festival for Film, Video and New Media). Schmid has held several fellowships from the city of Basel and was artist in residence at the Fondérie Darling in Montreal in 2006. His work has been acquired to form part of a range of collections including the Kunsthaus Zürich, the City of Basel and the Ursula Blickle Video Archive, Wien, among others.

Artist Code: 666