A filmed film and (two-sided) space installation - within ‘Theatermodelle’/’Theater models’, an interdisciplinary programme of the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies / Prof. Heiner Goebbels, University of Gießen, Germany - in cooperation with the Masterclass for Scenography / Prof. Erich Wonder, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.     

Collaboration with Bernhard Herbordt

- Hessische Theatertage 2004, Stadttheater Gießen - ‘feuer + flamme’ Festival 2004, Kampnagel Hamburg - Plateaux Theaterfestival 2004 - Mousonturm Frankfurt/Main - FJT - Festival Junger Talente 2003 - Offenbach


A surveillance cabinet, which is monitoring itself - until the observers find themselves in a space behind reality, accessible through the sight-shadows (’Sichtschatten’) in their field of view.

Hiding in the shadows ... , in a space behind reality, accessible through the shadows of things.

Only 8,5 sqm of total 27 sqm surface area of an average surveillance cabinet/observation desk, as a spatial example/test arrangement, could be viewed out of a fixed viewing point, the eyepoint of the (self-)surveillance camera installed in the upper right corner of this room for instance. What about the 18,5 sqm left?
Could there open up another space in the unseen areas/behind these sight-shadows - a space not expected to exist, unheard-of to be there? Another space adjacent to reality, concealed within the fold of the first one, and so on from one fold to the next, to the folds within a fold.

The camera oberservation of a room always offers an alibi to its protagonist - he was never on location.

An alibi is the attempt to proof that in a certain place at a certain time one was not there.

So: „I´m not there where I´m expected to be, I´m rather not there where I´m not expected to be. I prefer not to, in a spatial sense.“

Alibi n (= E^∞) models a space out of fragments, out of calculation errors in its reconstruction and (spatial) mapping. A space that eludes its colonization. A space not construed for presences, but absences, a space that subverts its own reality.

In front of the observation screens, in the folds and sight-shadows of the surveillance facility, standing under its own vague surveillance, traces and findings of discoverers and colonists, fieldworkers and forgers have been inscribed. As a narrative contradictory ensemble these artefacts form a time-transcending figure between Piri Reis (Ottoman navigator who has drawn a detailed map of the Antarctic already in 1512 - without ever having been there, however antedating its actual exploration in the year 1819), Lynceus (the scout of the Argonauts), Christopher Columbus, Gouverneur Leutwein, or General David Petraeus.

Front-side of the surveillance cabinet
[Installation fragment 1]

Many of our projects build upon the conceptional notion, that perception (of space) leaves an imprint or trace within reality. We understand perception not just as a passive act, but an active way of performing – hence the central role of the spectator (as a performer).
Models allow an otherwise impossible in- or outside view onto something, unhoped-for out- or insights on small exemplary worlds of deviating reality/(-ies), folded into the (one) reality we tend to see as the only one and consider the most probable. a reality nested inside another one

Sehen zweiter Ordnung
we see our work as an exercise in Sehen zweiter Ordnung
Seeing of second order/second-order perception

 

oben:
Der Betrachter, der die eigene Abwesenheit nicht bemerkt.
Zwischen gefilmter Wirklichkeit und tatsächlich vorliegender Gegebenheit strickt sich ein System von Bezugnahmen und Abweichungen von demselben nach Art eines Fehlersuchbildes; Anzeichen des aus ihren Fugen Geratens der Wirklichkeit.

Back-side of the installation [Installation fragment 2 - dislocated in another part of the exhibition space]