Studer / van den Berg
Passage Park #7: Relocate
The interactive projection Passage Park #7: Relocate (2017), commissioned by ZKM Karlsruhe for the group exhibition “Open Codes”, is one of several sceneries in the artist duo Studer / van den Berg’s project Passage Park that originated in 2014.
The large-format 3D projection, rendered in real time, is fed by a pool of two-dimensional photographs and three-dimensional objects, which make their appearance in several interactive scenes. These scenes are connected through a common interface, but can also be shown separately. The objects and images are randomly arranged into a gigantic, bottomless, surrealistic still life, through which an equally randomly positioned camera floats. Viewers can individually adopt and control the perspective to manoeuver through the labyrinth. A spotlight guides through a world of objects that keep each other company in stoic arbitrariness. A chandelier hangs above a ladder into which an oversized hard disk has become wedged beside some dried reeds and scaffolding that dissolves into the indeterminate expanse, where red-and-white checked dishcloths hang on a wire higher up. A light blue cat sleeps peacefully floating in the boundlessly undefined space, below it a floating pole with surveillance cameras, above it a candlestick, drifting beside a curve of semi-circular wires of what might be the border of a flowerbed, a green houseplant. Large-format photographs that repeatedly emerge from the darkness provide a certain spatial structure for the surrealist groupings; some of these depict facades or corridors. Viewers can cause the whole room light to up by holding down the mouse button, the photographs disappear and the objects float freely before cheerfully colourful, now even more bottomless backgrounds. Perspective views to the right, left, up and down, are generated in real time, and stand in contrast to the surreal world of images that is constantly forming without regard to plausibility. It shows us a world in transition, offering new angles for exploring what seems familiar.
(Text: Bettina Back)
