9 2019
videoinstallation
1 channel video, 2 channel audio (03:23 min)
binoculars, telescope, tripod, pedestal, headphones, screen
Do two protest movements - the revolution of 1989 in the GDR and the 2019 protests in Hong Kong - correspond? Can they be understood as an expression of a timeless phenomenon, the utopian moment? Where do humans in resentment, anger and despair take their hope and the impetus to self-empowerment? With the help of sundry binoculars and telescopes the exhibition space can be explored. Bird`s eye view video footage of the 2019 Hong Kong protest can be found in the distance. The telescope as apparatus of spacial empowerment also implicates the opposite, the being-seen as deprovation from power. At the same time audio recordings of the Dresden police radio from the 8th of October 1989 reference the uncertainties of revolutionary moments. The audio/visual installation addresses the spacial and temporal contingencies of the global utopian moment of democrarcy in it’s formal appearance as mass protest. Is the democratic utopia an essence of the conditio humana? Is only the permanantly revolving democracy instabile enough to allow for the unpredictable hopes of future generations? What happens when the utopian moment stagnates?
Text by Denise Ackermann
