DAGMAR KELLER & MARTIN WITTWER - SAY HELLO TO PEACE AND TRANQUILITY

The cultivated idyll of sophisticated residencies passes by in peaceful regularity in this video installation that is set in a complete white setting. Fastidiously tended front gardens, and the characteristic facades and trees of well to do establishments, assume park-like grounds behind the villas. A collage of reduced environmental sounds, synthetic tracks, and interlaced fragments of melodies, accompany the journey through this world that seems to get increasingly artificial. Paralysis envelops this place - a small dog acts as if he is numbed, the jet of a fountain seems to be frozen. The noise of a ringing telephone hints at the existence of inhabitants, in fact, all signs of existence in the work are implied through references. Differing layers of reality - part recordings of models, part photographs of actual settings - have been fused into a single image, into a synthetic idyll. The effect is unsettling - on the one hand, like the hostile entity of the idyll itself, and on the other hand, likes the increasing perfection with which the synthetic and the real merge. (Michael Voets)