video - 8’30’’ - exhibited at M54 in Basel (CH), 2022
A video in collaboration with Severin Hallauer about the attempt to overcome strangeness. Between isolation and loneliness, exposure and self-lying, we find ourselves in ambiguity and poetry.
It was made possible with the kind support of the GGGKulturkick, RadioX, and Others who do not wish to be named.
Visual artists Severin Hallauer and Marie Sutter have maintained an artistic as well as personal friendship since 2013. They are in exchange regarding their artistic practice and work together selectively. With the video and installation project PARA, the two deepen their collaboration. Over a period of three months in the summer of 2022, an installation video work will be created that deals with the subject of isolation in society. The research process will take place in Basel, Zurich, and London. Thematically, the two artistic positions meet with the notion of the psychology of human isolation in light of contemporary processes of digitalization and robotization. The artists investigate tendencies of loneliness in Western European societies and confront the question of their causes and effects. The artists have so far dealt intensively with this topic in their individual works and want to bring their experiences into synergy. How do digital communication platforms and diversified public spaces, and bubbles, influence life in Western spheres of prosperity? How are decollectivization and isolation taking place? What psychological patterns face each other in the dichotomy between exposure, potential violence in relation to a counterpart or society, and the violence of isolation? Multi-layered audio-visual elements glide into each other. The starting point is a performer's body in motion in an abstract space. The space is played by projection and the playback of live video recordings. The live recordings are alienated by means of algorithms and leave traces of the movements of the performer‘s body. A voiceover is heard reading texts that were created in collaboration with the artists. The voiceover enters into a dialogue with the performer at certain points. Is it the inner voice of the performer? A feeling of schizophrenia is created. The fourth wall is broken selectively. The performer as well as the voice address themselves directly to the viewer and turn away again. Dialogues and monologues flow into each other, addressing the performer self, the viewers, and the unknown.
M O T I V A T I O N The experiences of the pandemic of the last two years have highlighted the fact that loneliness and isolation have become a social concern in Western societies as well as in other regions of the world in recent decades. Drastically changed communication patterns under the sign of digitality, accelerated tendencies in social life, and the decay of cultural structures leave many people behind. Politicians seem to have recognized the problem. For example, the British government has appointed a Minister for Loneliness to address the issue. To what extent can politics solve a social problem? What is the impact of cultural change and what is the role of civil society? What impact do digitalization and robotization have on human psychology? The two artists also see culture and art as the duty to deal with this all-encompassing subject of human life.