Marcel Odenbach
«The Untruth of Reason or I Tried to Sleep Away the Problem»

The installation is composed of two monitors placed at diagonals to each other, and a German text by Peter Handke to the following effect: ‘Boch said recently he had begun to notice in himself the habit of counting from two, that very morning, for example, he had almost been run down by a car when crossing the road because he reckoned the second car was far enough away; the first car he had simply ignored.' (Peter Handke)
In terms of recording technique and picture content, the monitors represent antithetical positions. One monitor shows a colour tape of a static motif filmed by a moving camera, with music in the background. The other monitor shows a black-and-white film of moving objects shot by a fixed camera. The contents of both monitors reflect two contrasting mentalities in Germany; seeing them as moving pictures can be an everyday experience. The colour monitor hints at the nature-loving and romantic aspect, the melancholy, culturally laden ideas. The b/w monitor symbolizes the technical and organizational perfectionism characterized by the autobahn. Even in abstracted form, the extremes of the contrast shown here can lead to that altercation between relativism and rationalism whose problematical nature is further illustrated by the quoted text.

 

Marcel Odenbach