Felonie
2014 | Two-channel video, full hd, stereo, 13:33 min
Our »awareness of life« - or what we vaguely refer to as such - is essentially determined by our material environment. This can give us a feeling of reliability but also of insecurity. Things appear to us as reliable above all when they are silent and always available and function according to expectations. If they don’t, by denying the natural access of prognostication, they appear to resist and irritate us.
In »Felonie«, a person encounters everyday things beyond their familiar function and appearance. Instead, the focus is on approaching the materially conditioned stubbornness of the objects or their momentum. In use beyond their practical meaning, objects now lose their total availability. They are no longer just dead matter, stuff to be disposed of, looked at or consumed, but each thing in itself becomes an accumulation with potential to interact and change. This entanglement with things forces people to rethink again and again and to bring their actions into harmony with the behaviour of the objects. In the process, the classic dichotomy of active subject and passive object, of intention and tool, is visibly called into question: Who is actually controlling whom here?
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(Photos: Benjamin Ramirez Perez)