Dagmar Keller/Martin Wittwer
(GER/SUI)
Say Hello to Peace and Tranquility
2001
DVD, 400 x 300 cm video projection in enclosed white space, 23 min. loop, eight seats.
Sound: Michaela Grobelny
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Using different forms of representation to analyze and reflect upon reality is a core element in the visual arts. Mixing reality with representations of reality has become a common artists’ practice, even more so in the context of developments in contemporary digital image processing. In their work, German artist Dagmar Keller and Swiss artist Martin Wittwer go beyond this, by meticulously decoding the ‘real’ to the point where their manifestations become a reality of their own, accepted beyond a doubt.
In Say Hello to Peace and Tranquility, we find ourselves in a projected world of deserted suburbia. Terrace town homes slowly slide by, offering an endless panorama of wide sidewalks, tidy front gardens, latched facades and gabled houses. The absence of people appears completely normal; even the little lap dog that motionlessly slides into view does not seem that out of place. The constant stream, the endless ride is intensified by the electronic sound; a collage of synthetic noises, reduced natural sounds and, at times rhythmic, pulsing modulations, carefully give the images their flow.
Keller and Wittwer built their own miniature world under the light of daylight-neon, using real model houses [1] as well as photographed images of real houses. With a small digital camera revolving slowly around their giant maquette, they open up spaces and positions that challenge the logic of perspective. The specificity of their constructed viewpoint offers no space for alternate views, similar to the experience of a ride in an amusement park that presents a dynamic, audio-visual trip through an immersive cinematographic experience.
In Say Hello to Peace and Tranquility, it is the directed movement of our gaze by means of the moving camera that generates the cinematographic perception of a largely static reality. A town full of cherished imagery that is carefully revered but not lived, reveals traces of authenticity while at the same time exposing the surrogate nature of these icons. The repetitive video loop and the cloistered, removed character of the viewing space emphasize the artificiality, taking it and us beyond reality into an endless moment without reference to an outside time or place. Cut off from exterior influences and lost in the loop, we are seduced, acquiescing willingly to the reality on offer.
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Notes:
- Taken from the “Epoch IV” series that represents the architectural period from 1977 to the mid-1980s, according to the model house catalogue of ‘Faller Modellbau’.
Biography
In their work, artists Dagmar Keller ( Germany, 1972) and Martin Wittwer ( Switzerland, 1969) investigate the strategies of representation in the space between fiction and reality. They have collaborated together as an artists’ duo since 1997, presenting their artworks in numerous solo and group exhibitions at festivals and venues such as the Viper International Festival for Film, Video and New Media (Basel, SUI, 2001), Argos Arts Centre Brussels (BEL, 2001), the Netherlands Media Art Institute (Amsterdam, NED, 2002), Nicolaj Contemporary Art Center Copenhagen (DEN, 2002), Fine Arts Museum Taipei (TRE, 2003), Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zürich (SUI, 2003), and Phoenixhalle, Dortmund (GER, 2004). Keller and Wittwer live and work in Cologne, Germany.