Say Hello to Peace and Tranquillity

Language and speech are like architecture the basic elements of our Western conception of the world. They assign stable 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.

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 the 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. The exhibition's title refers to the work by Dagmar Keller / Martin Wittwer.

The exhibition "Say Hello to Peace and Tranquility" will be presented at to different locations, at Montevideo/TBA (Amsterdam) and Nikolaj CCAC – each time in a different way.

The artists

Jens Brand, "Stille – Landschaft" (Still – Landscape), 2002
Video and sound installation, 3' (Video)

In „Stille – Landschaft“ the visitors enter a soundproof room one at a time. A video projection starts to run when the door shuts. In the video the camera pans 360° over a bleak desert in Botswana, one of the few locations on the globe where at certain times an almost absolute silence reigns. No people, animals, not even wind can be heard. The visitors hear the authentic sound from the scene through the loudspeakers, that is: "nothing". "Stille – Landschaft" focuses on the documentation or documentability of the presence or absence of silence as well as the question whether silence can be captured.

Andreas Gedin, Gemini
Video projection; 7:09, Loop, Color, Sound

Two completely identical persons together tell us one and the same story in Andreas Gedin's video projection "Gemini". They permanently cut each other short, by finishing always the other person's word – even if it is as short as "the" or "a". However, they are quite a team, because, except for a few small phonetic distortions, the flow of the story is hardly interrupted. The viewer on the other hand glances back and forth in confusion. Just like in the fairy tale about the hare and the tortoise, he always lags behind. As soon as his glance reaches the person who is talking, speech has already moved to the other one. The unity of listening and sight slips from view, which is tricked by the identical duo. After all, the tortoise always was quicker than the hare because he tricked him by using his double.
The story that both protagonists tell us is based on Michel Tournier’s novel, "Gemini". It deals with the story of the twin brothers Jean and Paul, who were so similar that even their parents could not tell them apart, and the brothers eventually fused into one person: Jean-Paul. As we have known since Lacan, the acquisition of speech is directly linked to the constitution of identity while identity is linked to the recognition and acceptance of difference. Who ever refuses to differentiate, language will deny him.
In Gedin's video, which uses the subject of twins under the conditions of digital media, the identical "brothers" are united in their act of speech: Their non-identity or non-differentiation is doubled. The speakers do appear as individuals, but rather appear as a "dividual".

Gary Hill, Why Do Things Get In A Muddle? (Come On Petunia), 1984
Video, Color, Sound (in English); 32:00

Gregory Bateson approached the problems of language, meaning, order and disorder in his 1948 work "Metalogues" by creating a fictional dialogue between a father and his daughter. “Why Do Things Get In A Muddle?” is the daughter’s apparently naïve, yet central question. Gary Hill picked up this question in his 1984 (48/84!) video of the same title and circulates it throughout the dialogue between a professorial father and his daughter, who not coincidentally reminds the viewer of Alice in Wonderland.
In "Why Do Things Get In A Muddle? (Come On Petunia)" things appear to become more and more confusing. The actors in the scene move about and, above all, they speak backwards. At the same time, the video recording itself runs backwards so that everything should be in order. However, in actuality the viewer has to make an effort to understand the strained dialog, because as the language goes back and forth the phonetic structure is displaced. Also, a pipe – besides in films – cannot be really smoked backwards. A moment that is as irritating as a wooden arrow that flies into the father’s hand. However, it is these irritations that allow the viewer to realize what "went awry" in the video...
"Why Do Things Get In A Muddle? (Come On Petunia)" explores the possibilities, limits and effects on order and disorder in a philosophical manner as well as with regard to the media of video, film, and speech. While, as the father reasons, there are many ways to bring disorder to things, the margins for order are extremely limited: For example, there is only one "Come on Petunia." Whereupon Alice answers, "But Daddy, the same letters might spell “Once upon a time".

Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler, Full House, 2001
Video projection, 7' 26'', Loop, Color, Sound

In Full House, a camera slowly moves back and forth across the backyard of a house. It is a summer evening and a young woman walks inside and outside of the house and across her backyard, making preparations for a barbeque party. The camera, like a steadily moving, rarely blinking eye, slowly reveals details about the woman's surroundings: we see a tool shed in the background decorated with colored lights, two young men playing basketball in front of the woman's garage and we hear the sounds of neighborhood street traffic and cicadas. In the foreground we see a mail box labeled with her last name, "Dalloway" and a "Discovery Investments" real estate sign on the house gate. Dalloway's house and surrounding backyard environment suggests that she lives in an older, middle class neighborhood in an urban American town. The story develops with each movement of the camera: guests appear, including the two men we saw playing basketball earlier. They are talking, drinking beer and eating. The atmosphere of the party is quiet, almost sedate. Seen in the context that the house is for sale, the atmosphere suggests that the host, Clarissa Dalloway, is moving away and that this celebration is a farewell party. Dalloway appears saddened and distracted amongst her guests, and she leaves the group and wanders to the edge of her backyard to look out beyond the fence. At this point, we see Dalloway's backyard scenery shift seamlessly into a 19th century baroque theatre. Dalloway is the only person who looks out into this empty space from the previous century as it slips in and out of sync with the present depiction of place- her backyard. When Dalloway finally turns back to re-join her neighborhood guests, we are aware that the camera movement is part of a larger choreography-that the entire scenery is constantly moving in a circle around her. Dalloway escorts her guests to the edge of the spinning backyard for a final goodbye. We then see her alone, cleaning up the remnants from the party and she looks out into the circling scenery, into the shifting condition of her position in the past and present, public and private. With a sense of self-awareness, Dalloway smiles briefly to herself as the narrative begins to loop again.

Dagmar Keller / Martin Wittwer, Say Hello to Peace and Tranquility, 2001
Video installation, Color, Sound: Michaela Grobelny

In their video installation “Say Hello to Peace and Tranquility” Dagmar Keller / Martin Wittwer show the epitome of sophisticated German "Gemütlichkeit" (self-satisfied coziness), a groomed set of town homes surrounded by green grass and trees. As if it were filtered by a soft-focusing lens, an apparently endless panorama of wide sidewalks, tidy front yards, latched facades and gabled houses pans the viewers from left to right. The neighborhood is completely absent of people. A small lap dog that suddenly pops into view appears as if it is stuffed, and a fountain appears to be frozen. The suggestive soundtrack of sterilized sounds from the surroundings, synthetic basses and elevator music, which accompanies the images, reinforces the artificial character of the scenery, which alternates between a model railway, an open-air museum, a cemetery and an advertising brochure. At the same time, the sound is in direct contrast to the dismal ambiance. It gives the images such well-tempered coziness, which the viewer can hardly escape and which still remain utterly suspect.

Franciska Lambrechts, dialogues, 1996 – 2001
Video installation (based on 16mm), Color, Sound

The film-based installation “dialogues”, by Franciska Lambrechts, consists of two double projections that run in tandem, each of which shows a dialogue between two persons, related to each other in different ways (as couple, as mother/son, …). The faces of the speakers appear almost continuously in close-up. The conversations circle around a dying painter - the father of the young woman - and are mixed with memories from everyday life. However the partners in the dialogue do not correlate with one another. Instead, what we recognize are often more like introverted monologues than interpersonal dialogues.
The dialogues are based on the Italian novel "La Noia" by Alberto Moravia.

Mike Marshall, Someone, Somewhere is doing this, video projection

In the video installation "Someone, Somewhere is doing this" by Mike Marshall we witness the highly aesthetical, almost hypnotic scenario of a sunset that slowly breaks across the soft waves of a water's surface. This strong spectacle of nature is accompanied by an absent minded disharmonic hum that appears from off screen. The hum breaks up the overwhelming scene but still supports its suggestive power. "Someone, Somewhere is doing this" involves the viewer in an equivocal psychological and emotional situation. He struggles between the desire of total devotion to the dreamlike situation and a certain strangeness or suspicion – and even a kind of unconscious fear.
Link

Antoine Schmitt, Vexation 1, 2000
Software based Installation

A ball freely wanders in a rectangular space, bouncing on the walls. Each bounce generates a percussive sound. The successive bounces always play the same melody, but not always with the same speed and the changes of speed do not follow a comprehensible system. Rather, the movement of the ball between each percussion seems to obey many and contradictory forces at the same time: freedom of movement, mandatory melody, physical bounces... The tension between the forces appears through the mysterious movements of the ball.The work is based on a computer program, created by the artist himself. The title refers to Eric Satie's piece "Vexations", where a single melody has to be played on a piano 840 times (about 20 hours).

Addresses

Montevideo/Time Based Arts, 22. März – 27. April 2002
Keizersgracht 264 , NL 1016 EV Amsterdam
T +31 20 623 7101, F +31 20 624 4423
post@montevideo.nl

Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, 25. April – 2. Juni 2002
10, Nikolaj Plads, 1067 Copenhagen K
Tel: +45 33 93 16 26, Fax: +45 33 32 15 74
admin@nikolaj-ccac.dk

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The artists

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