Documentation of work submitted for diploma
Four video loops 16:9, 20:58 mins, variable sizes, 2005

Four video loops are presented on four different screens. The loops start simultaneously and run for an equal period of time. In terms of content and composition the images of the loops are designed to function autonomously as individual narratives, while at the same time also forming a narrative as a whole. Each image is supplemented by a sound-track providing an acoustic context for the images.

The first image shows the view from the artist's flat. Two other residential high-rises are visible in the frame. After a while a helicopter hovers backwards into view, turning around until it faces the flat directly. Then it veers off.

The second image shows a prototypical suburban estate of terraced houses, divided from a loud federal-road through a noise barrier. Only after the helicopter has veered off in the first image, a parachutist becomes visible dropping and landing in the area.

The third image is the central image of the work. It shows a middle-aged man building up a tent over an upper middle-class car. To emphasize the action, the loop was filmed in a neutral space. Only the barrier in the background together with occasionally passing cars and people locate the scene in the vicinity of the estate. As a home on wheels or a private capsule, the car is a sufficient cell and differentiation tool for its owner. The tent as an additional cover turns the car into a tautology, a Matrjoschka.

The final image offers a view of a settled plain from a slightly elevated point. Streets, cars, fields, and houses are visible. A nuclear power plant to the left dominates the image. It provides a visual bracket for the three previous images. The city, suburbia, settlements and cars live by the energy produced by the power plant and are at the same time threatened by its presence.

While the viewer is taking a first-person perspective in the first image, the three other images are presented from an omniscient perspective. The settlement is viewed from a safe distance. In the third image the camera zooms on the car, isolating a detail from the settlement in a neutral frame. In the final image the outside perspective is taken up again and probably most obvious. However, through the events depicted in the first two images, the others are charged with new meaning.

All four loops are of equal length, in order to provide a coherent narrative and also temporal frame for the images. The four images are presented next to each other. This allows the viewer to step back from the work or focus on each image individually.Each image should function autonomously, therefore a certain distance should be provided between the images. During the original presentation of the work the four loops were shown on flat screens. This was supposed to provide them with sufficient presence, even in a bright room.