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Text from the
catalogue: “Reservate der Sehnsucht”, written by Iris Dressler, Dortmund 1998. Videowork:
“Nóóó, you don’t understand” A transparent male body stretches across three video
projections, moving minimally as though floating in an aquarium. Similarly
phantom-like fragments of sounds and sentences emerge from off-screen.
Isolated from their original context in diverse television series, they form cryptic
dialogues that are repeatedly broken by short pauses; short moments of
silence. Neither plots nor actions come into effect, but rather a sterile
substitute, made of little fragments that are, and could make one, emotional.
The snatches of language as well as the expressions of emotion, like
laughter; sobbing, groaning, shrieking, giggling are, in addition to their
acoustic presence, simultaneously transmitted in text and projected onto the
floating body, like subtitles. The appearance and disappearance of voices in
turn, direct his movements in the ‘vacuum’. "This is your father
speaking" is said at one point. It is well known that film and television are
surfaces for the projection and mirroring of our confessed and hidden
longings and passions. Voices, sounds and film music play an important yet
subtle role in this. In Nóóó, you don't understand Bogers compresses the
effects of intonation parameters, both outside and inside speech -parameters
that even babies are able to decipher and certainly understand. With this he
creates space for certain dramatics that as a spectator; one can hardly
escape from. The lethargy of the passively floating body, reacting only to
'His Master's Voice', is passed on to the position of the viewer. The subtle
suggestive power of mass media, capable of manipulating our moods
considerably (this is of course how advertising operates), seems both isolated
and isolating alike; it appears as a powerful discourse that we enter
willingly. (I.D.) _______________________________________________ Excerpt from
the catalogue of the solo exhibition: ‘Shared Moments’, ‘Woodstreet
Galleries’, Pittsburgh USA, Oktober
2002. The video installation Play-Rev-Play consists of three semi-transparent
screens which structure the presentation room. The images projected upon them thus cannot
be grasped at first sight, but only after walking through the whole room and
taking in the clipping-like constellations.
The images can be viewed from both sides of the screens, creating a
multiplicity of perspectives, i.e. as many exclusions as connections, which are
directly linked to the viewer’s position. On the three screens of Play-Rev-Play we can see a foot, hand and head,
each of monumental size, drifting almost weightlessly and independently from
each other under water in front of a black background. The aquarium-like remoteness of their
presence and their distance to the observer’s world is as equally radical and
hermetic as in Nóóó, You Don’t Understand. As if
powered by an invisible force, hand, foot, and head suddenly act
simultaneously and slowly move to the surface of the water. But before they can break the surface and the
head can gasp for air, an arm suddenly appears out of nowhere and pushes the
head, hand and foot back into the water.
The meditative calm of complete self-sufficiency changes unexpectedly
into a violent action, which almost takes one’s breath away. As soon as the arm appears, the three
pictures briefly freeze and then reverse in slow motion back to the original
state. During this time the otherwise
silent images are accompanied by the original sound of the recordings. It is again peaceful and quiet, as if
nothing happened and nothing could shake the cosmos of these three solitary
images. One would almost forget the
incident if it were not continually repeating itself, and if tiny changes
were not entering the images each time.
In an impressive way, Play-Rev-Play shows us a central phantasm of
Western culture: the desire for constancy, continuity, and eternity; the fear
of change; the wish to hold on to things, moments and events, i.e. life itself; so that it remains
unchanged for all times. We are living
in a culture that represses and despises death, which paradoxically equals a
longing for death. And it is the media
of photography and film that reflects reality, in which the desire to hold on
coincides with the desire to kill the moment.
The perfect harmony, the ideal state of permanence and security, is
only disturbed when the lifeless body parts, which are fixed in the image and
preserved like compounds, begin to move; to break out of their calm
remoteness and want to return to life.
What first seems to be an act of external force, i.e. the arm that permanently pushes
down the head gasping for air, does not fulfill anything else than our
primary desire that nothing should change.
The arm in Play-Rev-Play seems to set boundaries that hope to see death
overcome in the picture. |