Multichannel video/ audio installation
HEARTBEAT, video projection, part of multichannel video/ audio installation, 2003
“Therapy” is recording the strong side effects caused by a chemotherapy treatment afflicting the body as well as the mind and soul. The vision of the nurse appears as an apocalypse. It is the power of thought that drives and recurs one, every time the tolerance of one’s existence is seriously challenged.
The nurse-clown takes control of the situation when things become harmful and threatening.
Four parallel video-projections are in a constant interaction or dialogue with each other. A dialogue shifting the viewer from the dreamlike state to a state of nightmare. In every one of the video projections the main and only heroine is the archetypal figure of the nurse as envisioned by the artist. The nurse is much different from the typical idea we hold, as she is herself a patient. A wounded nurse that she could also be a child.
She (the nurse-figure) involves both real and fake medical accessories. She wears a typical white uniform but she carries a toy doctor’s kit, used by kids when playing the doctor-patient routines. With the plastic stethoscope in one case she balances the beating of her heart through movement, while with a toy-horn in another case she is trying to say something. In the third video the nurse is exploring in panic a plastic syringe. In the fourth video we watch the ritual of the performer as she takes on the role of the nurse. This may resembles to a pornographic narrative, but in reality it is the confrontation of an actual problem poetically posed. A bonus track (a fifth parallel video) shows a real wounded girl narrating a story, probably from a diary, with a rather confusing speech. Sound plays a crucial role in the installation.
The mix of sound created by the individual loud sounds of the videos composes a new noisy soundscape that extends beyond the installation and functions as an imposing element, as well as an introduction before viewing.
The nightmare changes to a dream with syringes.
The artist has manufactured and placed a wallpaper along the wall of the staircase that leads to the main exhibition space. It is a kind of a pink pattern. It seems as if you are entering a little girl’s pink room, but on a more careful look on the wallpaper you notice that the pink objects are real syringes. They are pink. But they are syringes.
The pain and the fear of pain are juxtaposed with anything that could make one feel nice. The work in its entirety is touching upon the bipolarity of situations with the use of bitter-sweet images. Pain – euphoria, disturbance-equilibrium, fear-courage, is it possible that one could be in control of any situation?