DINO

--- DT

videocity präsentiert erneut eine Schweizer Premiere: Unter dem übergeordneten Titel “Cosmic Strings” sind einige Videos aus dem Werk der letzten 20 Jahre von Tomas Eller, ein italienischer Künstler, der international ausstellt, vereint – zu sehen auf den eBoards des Congress Center Basel, im videocity.bs-Schaufenster des GLOBUS Basel sowie auf dem Screen der Mediathek der Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst FHNW. Für jeden Standort hat der Künstler eine besondere Komposition gewählt und spezielle Auswahl getroffen. Durch das spezifische Umfeld bieten sich Überraschungen.

Obwohl unabhängig und eigentlich für einen Kunstraum entstanden, ist bei videocity.bs 

spannend zu erleben, welche Herausforderung die Grösse der elektronischen Werbetafel und des Schaufensters des GLOBUS Basel sowie der öffentliche Raum an die Videos stellen: Welchen Einfluss hat das quirlige Treiben des Messeplatzes und des Marktplatzes mit den vielen Passanten und dem dichten Verkehr auf die Wahrnehmung der autonomen Kunstwerke?  Das Leben verstärkt die Faktoren Bewegung und Raum in den Videos. Die Videos werden hier ohne Ton gezeigt. Der Sound der Strasse ersetzt die ursprüngliche Tonspur. Zufälle des Alltags greifen in die Komposition ein und lassen die Videos in neuem Licht erscheinen und umgekehrt, die Videos den Alltag.  Ganz anders ist die Wahrnehmung in der Mediathek: Hier werden die Videos mit ihrer Tonspur gezeigt und Besucher können die Unterschiede überprüfen. Und dies ganz entspannt in dem konzentrierten, stilvoll gestalteten Studienambiente, von wo aus man einen herrlichen Ausblick auf Basel und das Umland hat. videocity.bs wird für einige Wochen lang zum immateriellen Bestandteil der Stadt und regt zu Austausch, Verschiebungen von Ordnungssystemen, unerwarteten Blicken und Begegnungen an.

--- ENG

videocity.bs is pleased to be presenting the Basel public with a Swiss premiere again.

Beneath the superordinate title of "Cosmic Strings" videocity.bs unites several videos which came about during  the past 20 years – which will be shown on the eBoards of the Congress Center Basel, in the videocity.bs showcase at GLOBUS Basel, as well as on the screen of the Mediatheque of the FHNW College of Art and Design. For each separate location, the artist chose a special filmic composition and selected the most suitable films sequences. So each specific environment has its own peculiar surprises to offer.

Although it was created independently and with a view to an interior art space, it is exciting to experience how in the context of videocity.bs new challenges are placed upon the showcased video by the scale of the electronic advertising screens and the public space: What influence does bustling life on the Messeplatz trade fair plaza or the market place in general, with its many passers-by and dense traffic have on our perception of an autonomous work of art? The surrounding hustle and bustle amplifies the factors of movement and space within the videos. 

The videos are shown here without sound. The sound of the streets replaces the original soundtrack. Every day chance occurrences interrupt the composition, allowing the videos to appear in a new light and vice versa, the videos affect everyday life in their turn. The perception enabled in the media centre is completely different: Here the videos are shown with their original soundtrack and visitors can examine the differences in perception caused. And all this is realized in a relaxed mode in the concentrated, stylishly designed ambience of the media study room, from where you may also simultaneously enjoy a magnificent panoramic view of Basel and environs. For several weeks videocity.bs is set to become a moving yet intangible component of the city, encouraging new exchanges, the shifting of familiar systems of order, with unexpected perspectives and encounters once more.

--- Description of the Work

 With "DINO", by way of a filmic attempt at an ordering system, Tomas Eller would like to divine the trail leading to the laws of mutually attractive and repulsive forces  using a multitude of toy model cars.  With this aim in mind, he had an Italian Ferrari F40 and a Japanese Toyota rendered into a single module in a toy factory in Shanghai.

"The cars appear to be moving in disorder around a room, whilst their lights are constantly flashing like a pulse, as if some sort of emergency or alarming situation were unfolding. Each vehicle is equipped with a sensor so that whenever two cars collide, they change their travelling direction. The artist has built a microphone into a car, which constantly broadcasts acoustic signals of the collisions to the video, without us viewers being able to discern which car in the network was responsible. Cars, modules, molecules, individuals ... Eller does not ask the question of the car or the machine as an object, but poses the question of determining the location of a factor within a mass of constantly changing factors", according to the art critic and author Sabine Gamper.

The original soundtrack of "DINO" is replaced in the videocity.bs showcase at GLOBUS Basel by the sound of the streets. The video shows that locating something or someone as individuals within a constantly changing mass is very difficult. In interaction with day to day life, this is more left to chance and to one's own guesswork.

Andrea Domesle  (translation: Christopher Haley Simpson)

--- Description of the Installation

The video has a soundtrack, but here during videocity.bs they will however be shown up on the screen in the GLOBUS Basel shop window without any original film sound whatsoever, so that the living sounds of Basel city shall provide them with a unique sound track.  The video “DINO”, 2004, 10 min., can be seen juxtaposed with another version of  “DINO” -  in within an installation involving toy model cars in the showcase window of the GLOBUS Basel. The “DINO”-cars are art objects in themselves, so-called multiples, 32 x 9 x 15 cm, in an edition of 100, and they can moreover be purchased as individual art  objects.

The artist Tomas Eller had made a sketch for the installation in a Skype conversation with the curator Andrea Domesle. The decoration team of the GLOBUS Basel had executed it.