| Position | Billy Roisz |

Billy Roisz in Vienna in October 2025 © Diagonale / Lisbeth Kovačič

In 2026, the Diagonale will dedicate a comprehensive retrospective (Position) to the work of filmmaker, musician and performer Billy Roisz. Since the late 1990s, Billy Roisz has been steadily working on the forms of  lectromagnetic image and sound transmission—the operating noises created by manipulated imaging equipment. Her videos are part of a different history of the moving image, shaped by networks,  cybernetic systems, grid and grind, and by interactions and feedback loops between the visual and the acoustic.

Billy Roisz’s practice is characterized by collaborative work. Her videos are created in exchange with musicians and filmmakers, including long-time collaborators such as Dieter Kovačič, who is usually responsible for sound or music and is occasionally also a co-author. Whether they show grids in delicate gray (My Kingdom for a Lullaby #2, 2004, with Michaela Grill), sonic waveforms with color modulations (Close Your Eyes, 2009), or image distortions with animal drawings (Chiles en Nogada, 2011, Diagonale Award for Innovative Cinema), Roisz’s videos are overwhelming. Despite concrete source material or even narrative structures (Do They Speak Color?, 2022, with Dieter Kovačič), there remains a skepticism toward the image. Instead, there is a joy in experimentation: images that expand like chewing gum, sounds that resemble endlessly spinning and scratched records.

Billy Roisz, born in Vienna in 1967, was co-organiser of the REHEAT Festival (2007-2015). In 2011, she received the Diagonale Award for Innovative Cinema for Chiles en Nogada, followed by the State Scholarship for Media Art in 2018, the Austrian Art Prize for Film Art in 2021, and in 2022 she was accepted as a member of the Vienna Secession.