“Empty Offer” started with a 21x 9 feet (3 m x 7 m) feet video projection of a desert lot in Utah. When visitors entered the gallery and wished to participate, they posed in front of the projection. We digitally photographed them in front of the background scene, saved the image and then re-projected that new image back onto the wall, therewith provided a new background for the next visitor, who had to arrange himself with his predecessor(s). On the days, we didn’t offer this sort of access to the land, the emergence and disappearance of over 90 visitors, who had entered the situation from either Brooklyn, Leipzig or Vienna, could be watched in a slow fading loop, accompanied by a desert sound collage.

We overwrite by covering and adding new, we erase by scratching, we search by digging. For a picture we place ourselves into a light that transforms and distorts us. The body covers up what is behind or what was there before, while it simultaneously looses itself. So it goes on, one generation after the other, knowingly, unknowingly, undeniably.  We surrender to the render, our presence fades, we blur, we loose resolution, we overlap, the source keeps altering. Standing in this place one relates almost generically, to a time with universal dimensions, not so much to place but to space and the vastness of it. One stands there and experiences that a certain emptiness has deeply fulfilling qualities. But its only a moment. And universal moments never last. One knows, former inhabitants have disappeared and more recent occupants have used the void to project their ideas on it. Living history is ruthless and a powerful mirage. We stand there as insignificant visitors starting to disappear.