Silencers – exhibition video
1999 | 4:3 PAL, dual channel installation, 2x stereo, loop | 00:14:00
The lack of truth inherent in the artificiality of the film is compensated for by small errors intended to convey that the situation is not constructed and planned in advance, but really did happen and developed unpredictably, in the same way as we experience reality.
In action films this happens in part with the aid of constructed coincidences, like when the target that is shot at gets missed. This seems even more random and unpredictable because it only occurs briefly, lasting for a mere moment. An object is hit, rather than a human target. The will to kill, the transmission of the thought on an object, unloading in the shot, takes place here in the staging of the film. Shooting liberated from the purpose of killing reveals the soul of the object. The essence of the object is hit and thereby highlighted, and it is in it’s soul where human beings find themselves. The first step was cataloging the video sequences from action films alphabetically, according to groups of objects, and then arrange them in sequence according to the size of the objects as a reference point to a sense of closeness.
The further treatment consisted of investigating and sketching the direction of the shot in each case, thus changing the sequence again. The direction of the shot was the aspect to work out the division on to two screens. This recreates a spatial situation. The viewer is placed in the path of the shot or in the position of the shooter.
Exhibition view from “There is a place”, Kaispeicher A, Hamburg, 2002