Götter und Geister

https://filmerei.de

--- Präsentationshinweise DE

Dieses Video ist Teil des videocity.bs-"Loneliness"-Zyklus. Dieser war zudem vom 28.05. – 11.08.2019  von  Montag bis Freitag von 10 bis 13 Uhr am e-Board des Congress Center Basels aussen und zudem parallel innen auf dem Monitor in der Mediathek der Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst FHNW, 8. OG, Freilager-Platz 1, Basel-Münchenstein (dort geschlossen 30.05. – 02.06.), zu sehen.      Die Präsentation wurde vom GLOBUS Warenhaus um einige Tage verlängert. 

--- Gestaltungshinweise

Das Künstlerduo hat auf Einladung der Kuratorin Andrea Domesle diese Arbeit geschaffen. Sie hatten schon zuvor über das Phänomen des "unboxing" recherchiert gehabt - jedoch das Video erst im Zusammenhang mit der Präsentationsmöglichkeit im videocity-GLOBUS Basel-Schaufenster fertig gestellt. Wie die Jahre zuvor, hatte das Kaufhaus wiederum eines der grossen und prominenten Fenster in der Nähe des Haupteingangs für videocity reserviert. Das Künstlerduo hat für das Schaufenster einen Gestaltungsentwurf gemacht. Dieser wurde vom Dekorationsteam des GLOBUS Basel umgesetzt. Es war ein sehr minimalistischer Entwurf:  Leere, beleuchtete Sockel - über denen der Monitor mit dem Video hing. 

The video "Gods and Spirits" is a found footage montage culled from "unboxing" films, which have come to enjoy great popularity on the internet in recent years. In the videos shot by amateurs you can see various attention-seekers unpacking a product. The videos found on online platforms have relatively simple qualities, which cannot possibly explain the considerable fans they generate. Sylvie Boisseau & Frank Westermeyer achieved an explanation of the material they found by way of the montage technique; they focus on the hands of the unboxers, who touch the packaging, stroking, pressing or repeatedly tapping on certain areas. They also handle with knives in order to slit or to cautiously stab open packaging. The artist duo makes it quite clear that the unpacking is charged with emotions and combined with seduction. The products are invoked by the unboxers as if in a ritual. In the process the commodity, which usually remains hidden, acquires a spiritual presence just like a cult object; it is treated as if it were a living being - similar to the animistic thinking of children or primitive peoples who attribute a life force to objects or dead matter. Hence the unboxers build a personal relationship to the product. It is a relationship of various kinds - loving, desiring, erotic, adoring - which we must understand as an authentic one. It is said that unboxers tend to buy a lot or as the case may be, they want to possess something first and foremost. But are they really interested in owning and using these things? Or do the videos express an unfulfilled longing for what is permanently new? In any case, it can be said that even though the unboxers appear to be mostly alone in their videos - each of them attracts their own throng of followers and they all participate together at the "fair".

A relationship to products is primarily staged inside shop windows. The founding history of the GLOBUS enterprise began in 1892 in Zurich, as Switzerland's first major department store. The big attraction at that time were the electrically illuminated display windows!

Sylvie Boisseau & Frank Westermeyer transfer the stage production style of the unboxers to their design for the videocity.bs in the GLOBUS Basel display windows throughout the summer of 2019. Next to their video, pedestals of differing height are also positioned. Here spotlights are used to illuminate a void, in proximity to neighbouring display windows where the newest sales objects stand. The artists invoke the paradox of ritualized unpacking: the product is – as yet? - still invisible, but its  "spirit" already appears to manifest itself.  However the desiring gaze cannot actually take hold of it, so that the mind-product relationship really only functions within the digital world.   

Andrea Domesle (translation: Christopher Haley Simpson)