Installation for the movie "Progress versus Regress" by Mélanie Bonajo.
Nam June Paik Award at Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster
Metal, fabric, rubber, cushion, battery, LED.
People talk about the elderly a lot but rarely ask them what they think. Sometimes serious, usually with light-hearted humor, Melanie Bonajo questions a group of centenarians about their lives, new inventions, selfies and technology. In the background, the virtual scenery is constantly changing; one moment the subjects are in a space station, and the next moment in a Jacuzzi. For some, technology is a breath of fresh air, for others a mystery. There is disappointment about the materialism of the young, but they also think t he generation gap is smaller than it used to be, when young people were expected to be seen and not heard. In the second half of the film, old and young come together to talk about modern communication technology, missing the feeling of trus…
The installation welcomes the visitors to sit together in a distorted wheelchair bench. In the room the atmosphere is dry, a bit clinical but touching, intimate and funny. Like elderly houses.
The blue strips on the walls demarcate the scope of the film and take on the dimensions of its projection surface. The specific shade of blue has been borrowed from the bluescreen –another technical achievement: it is used in films, as is the case here, to “free up”figures, for example, and reposition them in front of virtual backgrounds. Foregoing the moment of illusion created by this box of tricks, The installation simply shows these levels several times, thereby opening it up as a humorous commentary. This network of relationships both within and outside the film promotes orientation but at the time it overtaxes the viewer. Ultimately, this turns our attention self-reflexively onto our own modern-day consumption of media.
Movie by Mélanie Bonajo,
text by LIMA and NJP award
curation by Hanne Mugaas, Kristina Scepanski, Anne-Claire Schmitz
pictures Thorsten Arendt
2018