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The Shape of Returning — Abstract Geometric Film on Society, Collapse, and Renewal

The Shape of Returning is an abstract audiovisual film in five movements by Bernd Klein, examining recurring social structures through geometry, motion, and color.

Inspired by early abstract cinema—particularly Rhythmus 21 by Hans Richter—the work replaces narrative with systems, and characters with shapes. Geometry stands in for society. Color stands in for identity. What persists is not conquest, but continuity.

Rather than forming a closed cycle, the work unfolds as a recursive process.
Each phase returns, but never at the same level.
Collapse does not reset the system; regeneration resumes from the highest state previously achieved.

00:00 — Movement I: Before Color Wakes

Black and white squares drift within slow, repeating musical patterns.
The sound is restrained but not silent: largely static fourths establish a suspended harmonic field.

The first shapes appear as ancestors, holding balance before history asserts direction.
Time feels extended rather than empty—motion without urgency, structure without hierarchy.

This is the system at its simplest state: unified, unresolved, and open to differentiation.

01:45 — Movement II: The First Multiplicity

Forms diversify into triangles, circles, and pentagons.
Rhythm and structure emerge within a still-monochrome order.

Difference appears without conflict.
Organization begins.

02:32 — Movement III: When Color Enters the Blood

Color arrives in stages, transforming the field.
Distinct groups form, collide, and coexist, filling the space with tension and motion.
The system reaches its highest internal complexity.

As in human visual development—where perception begins with contrast before gradually distinguishing color—difference emerges incrementally, not as rupture but as expansion.

03:48 — Movement IV: The Time of Erasure

Violence enters abruptly into a previously ordered world.
An orange laser beam cuts across the field—an external force without warning or justification.

The shapes are defenseless against the aggressor.
Their only response is motion: evasion, displacement, temporary survival.

The beam strikes, misses, strikes again.
One by one, the forms disappear.
No resistance alters the outcome.

In the end, only the green triangle remains.
Not victorious, but invincible.
With no targets left, the violence exhausts itself.
The war ends.

05:48 — Movement V: Continuation Through Multiplicity — The Survival of Difference

From the surviving form, regeneration begins.
The green triangle contracts, releasing accumulated diversity: squares, triangles, pentagons, and circles re-emerge in multiple colors and scales.

This is not a return to origin.
The system resumes at the highest level it has reached, carrying forward difference rather than erasing it.

About the System

The Shape of Returning does not depict a loop or a reset.
It models a structure in which destruction interrupts, but does not simplify.

What returns is not the beginning, but the capacity for complexity itself.