PICTURES AT THE PICTURES, DVD / PAL / 16:9 / Length: 8‘30”, 2006
This 8’30’’ long video is based on an equally long scene in Brian de Palma’s movie‚ ‚Dressed to Kill‘ (1980), which is set in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York. With the help of reduction of the seemingly most important picture information – the protagonists themselves – a kind of ‚exchange of roles’ is evocated. The paintings, which otherwise would only be in the background, now float almost freely through an imaginable room amidst the blackened areas. Both painting and film are two-dimensional mediums functioning as surrogate for three-dimensionality. This impression is heightened by the actors appearing in the form of shadow-like areas, as well as with the dissolving of the paintings’ standardized rectangular forms. Montage and sound of the scene remain unaltered, and even the dramaturgy of the film remains the same.Because of the ‘not seeable’ component, though, the dramaturgy certainly is heightened, just as suspense and the spectator’s attention are too.