synchronized 5-channel video installation, stereo, seamless loop 17:11min frame accurate synchronization, chairs, yoga mats
Part of “OS Grabeland”
There are two approaches for “opening a source” – the empirical and the metaphysical one, the one where you start digging and the one where you start dancing. In both cases its the one small detail that leads to success: where to dig – and when to dance.
Exhibited as a video sculpture at M29 gallery, April 2011, Cologne Germany and as a large synchronized 5 channel video projection, installed at Malzfabrik Berlin, June 2011
Like journeymen who go out into the world to enrich and test their craft, we spent four years traveling three continents to learn about different ways of finding water. During that time it became clear to us that metaphysical approaches are often considered equal counterparts to scientific methods among the water searching community. None are more reliable than chance.
When Tarkovski’s Stalker leads the Professor and the Writer into the Zone to find the mythical “room” in the center of the “zone”, which is seemingly just a few yards from where they stand, the Stalker insists that they cannot attempt a direct assault, but must make their way around things in order to survive, turning this way and that, moving every few feet toward a cloth tied up with metal nuts, retrieving it, and throwing it out, in another direction, before setting forth again.
Every “zone” has it’s own rules that circulate around its center point. Whenever we entered the mode of water searching – in Europe, America, on a ship crossing the Atlantic – groups of people around us started line dancing. Was that just a coincidence? At first we didn’t see a connection between our search that was mostly guided by intuition and coincidences, and the lines and circles that appeared in form of strictly choreographed steps, but when the occurrences became more frequent, we started to pay attention. Did the line dance choreography of songs like: Thank God for the radio” and “Honkey town” spell out the map we had to follow, in order to find water?