|
Text from the catalogue: “Short Cuts: Anschlüße an
den Körper” Written by Iris Dressler, Dortmund 1997
Ritual 1&2
Ritual
1-2 & 3 is a concentrate of pictures and sounds from fictitious
scenes of violence of the kind we get served up daily on/by television.
Bogers has isolated the culmination of physical abuse and execution,
always the same and unwinding in a matter of seconds, from hundreds
of actionfilms and edited them to 13 different videostreams. The installation consists of three scenes running simultaneously in one
room. Its central point is an old-fashioned wall clock, the ticking
of which gives the beat for the whole ensemble. Twelve monitors are standing on the floor, screens towards the centre.
Film-stills of violence move from right to left across each of those
monitors. Only when a still completely covers the screen, the action
unwinds for exactly one second - going anticlockwise from monitor
to monitor with precisely one second delay. Thus the "action"
turns around in a circle - and the viewers walk behind. Robbed of every content except for that of merciless slaughter the litanies
of hunters and hunted finally prove to be nothing but sterile and
mechanical stage direction: get set, go and fall. The comic-like sound
effects are designed correspondingly and only now and then for a short
moment interrupted: the only sound of duration is the ticking of the
clock. On a wall of the room there is a video projection showing live and in
rotation the extremely distorted images of three different closed-circuit-cameras.
One of them is above the installation, the next in another part of
the exhibition, while the third shows the foyer of the museum. Each
camera vibrates - in time, by the second. Directly in front of the video projection a table and two chairs have
been placed in the installation, looking as old-fashioned as the clock.
There one can see - via monitor and headphones - another audio-visual
remix of the action-filmworld, interwoven by cross-fades. Here also
-and despite the headphones - the ticking of the clock seeps into
the sound track of the videos. Whether "really" positioned in front of the monitors or "virtually" placed on the video screen: voyeuristic and narcissistic pleasure draws the viewer into the course of the installation and at once makes him subject to its rigid rhythm.
|