Previous Exhibitions
Jan Speckenbach - Birk Weiberg:
DCX. Your World in My Tears
9. October - 9. November 2001.
In cooperation with ZKM (Karlsruhe), K & S Gallery (Berlin), and C3 (Budapest)
DCX is a video installation with three purposes:
1. It aims to create a narrative work in the installation genre,
2. to come to terms with montage in a performative way, and
3. to utilize new technological developments.
··· Though he mistrusts his competitor Jürgen, Robert agrees to a merger of their companies due to his friendship with the economy lawyer Eckard. Jürgen's wife and assistant Lydia falls in love with Eckard, but their loyalty for Jürgen cannot allow for a conflict-free love relation. Eckard abstains from his lover when Jürgen experiences increasing pressure from the shareholders. But Lydia' support for her husband proves to be too late.
··· The narration is distributed among three screens, between which the viewer can move freely. The cinematic montage is transferred into space. Shots that follow each other in the cinema (e.g., shot – reverse shot) can be shown simultaneously and create with their structure a virtual space of action.
··· The footage will be re-edited daily and the story will always be told in a different way. The viewer watches a movie that only exists here and now and will be lost the next day. By adding, taking away and re-editing scenes, the narration is modified. Single motifs of the story are once emphasized and then fall back into total irrelevance. Different styles of montage are confronted in their mode of action. The installation tries to bridge between cinematic and multimedia approaches. By changing the narrative context, the single shots acquire a new connotation. DCX regards itself as an open work whose final form is constant metamorphosis.
··· The detachment from analog storage media and the separation of video and editing data allows for dynamic presentations of sounds and images. The film consists entirely of original DV footage that was shot with five actors on various locations in Berlin. The installation receives its up- to-date editing data via Internet, while the video data is stored on a local hard disk. Additionally the changes of montage can be observed as a graphic model on the website of keyframe.org. The binding of the installation to the Internet permits the parallel setup at several locations. The space is designed for its reproduction.
··· Jan Speckenbach [*1970] studied art history, philosophy and media art in Munich, Karlsruhe and Paris and works as a free author and video artist. Together with Rebecca Picht, he is the author of the multimedia installation Film Essay Black Maria that was shown in the Berlin exhibition The XX. Century (1999/2000) at the Neue Nationalgalerie/Hamburger Bahnhof. Recently he worked as a video artist for theater projects of Frank Castorf and Claus Peymann.
··· Birk Weiberg [*1972] studied art science, philosophy and media art in Karlsruhe and Berlin and works as a media artist and designer. Recently he produced together with Margarete Vöhringer the video installation The Homeless Story that was shown in summer 2001 in Boris Groys' exhibition Bo01 – Home/Homeless in Malmö.
··· In 2000 Speckenbach and Weiberg launched the website keyframe.org as a theoretical and practical forum for cinema in the digital age.
