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21/3/2002

Say Hello to Peace and Tranquility

Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam

Andreas Gedin (S)
Gary Hill (USA)
Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler (USA)
Dagmar Keller / Martin Wittwer (D)
Franciska Lambrechts (B)
Mike Marshall (GB)

The Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo/Time Based Arts presents from March 23 - April 27 the exhibition Say Hello to Peace and Tranquility curated by Hans D. Christ, Iris Dressler (Dortmund) and Jan Schuijren (Amsterdam).
The exhibition "Say Hello to Peace and Tranquility" introduces video installations that are involved with the structure of language and/or reconstructed spaces. They examine the mechanisms of physical and especially psychological inclusion and exclusion patterns that are anchored in language as well as in architecture. The main focus of the exhibition is the significance of space and language in our private, intimate life as an assumed guarantee of tranquility, order and harmony.

Language and speech are like architecture the basic elements of our Western conception of the world. They assign established positions to the interior and exterior, subject and object, here and there - yet they are nothing but makeshift constructions or vehicles that threaten to collapse easily. Furthermore, language and architecture are reflections of the relationships between power and weakness.

Thanks to the advances in digital imaging, which allow a user to navigate through entire urban environments using hyper-real architectural simulations, we more and more regard the world as virtual building blocks. "Real" architecture, like theme parks and shopping malls, is subscribing to that artificial, model-like design. In contrast, "real life" seems to be occurring in front of the same backdrop of TV family dramas, whose facades and interiors - set in the so called "gated communities", those high-security tracts of private bliss - appear to be perfect. No one would be surprised if one of these days spotlights will fall from the sky

The video installation of the artist duo of Dagmar Keller and Martin Wittwer explores the clichés of the sophisticated romance in terrace town homes. In Say Hello to Peace and Tranquility the camera moves, devoid of plot, through the backdrop of suburbs that are completely deserted. Images, which seem to come from the conventional world of model train sets are mixed with scenes from real terrace house homes. However, it is difficult to differentiate between the model world and reality, and the question arises which of these worlds is serving as the dull role model.

In the video installation Full House by Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler "home" becomes the scene of a stereotypical and at the same time fractured narration about desire, the delay of desire and frustration, turning into desire again. The person's own four walls as an imaginary palladium of security for the individual and at the same time for social interaction turns up continuously, in the oppressive experience of isolation.

Mike Marshall's video work, Somewhere, Someone is doing this draws the viewer into an equivocal psychological and emotional situation, by displaying the hyper-aesthetic, almost hypnotic spectacle of a sunset.

The video installations by Gary Hill, Andreas Gedin and Franciska Lambrechts grapple with the structure of language. For example, Franciska Lambrechts explores the different social and psychological relationship patterns within the "family" system using complexly interwoven dialogues. Security and isolation, desire and frustration, inclusion and exclusion, violence and resistance do not take place within the safe and familiar four walls, but instead appear to take place within language itself.

While woman and man, mother and daughter as well as mother and son in Franciska Lambrechts' videos wrestle with their differences, Andreas Gedin shows the almost restless dissolution of difference in his video work Gemini: Two identical people tell a story together, with one person always completing the other one's words. The language appears to wander almost seamlessly from one person to the other and back again. The speakers do not use the language here, but instead the language appears to seize the speakers.

Gary Hill even makes the performers in his video Why Do Things Get In A Muddle? (Come On Petunia) speak backwards. However, since the video itself is running backwards, the structure of the language is, in a limited way, restored. By talking back and forth, the father and daughter struggle with the structure of order and disorder.

Image: Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler (USA) Full House, 2001

With thanks to the Goethe Institute, Amsterdam
http://www.goethe.de/be/ams/nlindex.htm

Opening march 22 5pm-7pm

Opening hours: Mon - Fri 9.00 - 17.00 h.
Gallery: Tu - Sat 13.00 - 18.00 h.
Reference Room: Mon - Fri 13.00 - 17.00 h

For more information please contact Marieke Istha (communication) istha@montevideo.nl

Netherlands Media Art Institute
Montevideo/Time Based Arts
Keizersgracht 264
NL 1016 EV Amsterdam
T +31 20 623 7101
F +31 20 624 4423

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