gutshaker

Sitting on a floor made of rough wooden planks. Above me a concrete shell of a deconsecrated chapel.The reading session has begun – citing the finest chapters of the Revelation. The very start is a news coverage of a trial of Balkan War criminals, served by a female voice – a synthesized voice, roughly as warm as liquid nitrogen.

The war criminal content smoothly shades into passages from the Old Testament. The voice recedes, giving way to something distant but inevitably coming closer and closer. It could be traffic pulsing at a spagetti junction, but soon it gains more power, turning into continuous din of thunder.

The sound starts touching the audience, at first very gently, but then, with the growing intensity, it is rather irrational slapping and I give up searching for comparisons the moment the vibrations invade my body. Their hectic frequency makes my eyes slip out of focus,the interior of the chapel turns into a TV image suffering from poor reception. We face wind coming from the floor – a sound gale trying to re-arrange our entrails.

Earthshaker (sound performance)

repetitive vanities

Video 1

A muffled laughter of a tripple bear who’s trying hard to slice a log with a rather solid coping saw, while banging his right elbow against the wall of a barrel where the animal is sealed in.

Video 2

The tearsome hunter’s wet epilogue. Having boarded a flatboat after a long walk across a melodious forest he moves slowly to the centre of a pond and moors the boat to a pole. There he stands, slowly aiming his duo of barrels against the bottom of the boat. A shot echoes round and he sits down, waiting…waiting.

Video 3

A certain decorator trying to reach the white ceiling above him, infinitely falling off his stepladder in a way as majestic as the Wagner’s leitmotif looping in the background. There seems to be not much difference between reaching the stars and reaching a lightbulb. The decorator’s hat always goes first. When he runs out of patience, he will have a try to rule the world.

Peter Land

The Failure In the Face of Reality

Sysiphosian collection

kunstonline

Galeri Nicolai Wallner

beyond the rainbow

There’s a family, maybe on their way to jet off for a booked-in-advance pack of memorable moments.
There’s the little daughter in the lead, battling fatigue with excitement. Her mother and father do their best to stay in tow, taking turns in carrying their youngest daughter.
The problem is there is no gate 9 in front of them, no check-in counters behind them – there is just void space all over them.
Their eyes are fixed on a huge timetable which fails to get closer and which nobody but them can see.
There’s nothing to move away from, nothing to get closer to, just an invisible conveyor belt under their feet.
Surrounded by nothingness, the family doesn’t give up their hope of catching their flight.Hans Op de Beeck (video)

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hansopdebeeck