"Schluff" is the term given to the observation of a room by means of an infrared monitoring camera. The room is small, windowless and narrow and has no assigned use. There is in fact a bed, but it would never cross our minds that it might be a bedroom. Boxes over the bed suggest possible storage. The coarse grained resolution of this black and white playback of a scenario and the behavior of the persons in the room let one assume something forbidden, or at least a secret to observe, or assume the observation is taboo.

The people, two women, move in the close space as if they where prepared to be compelled to spend an abundance of time here, a certain boundlessness is suggested in their motion. Black fades between each scene function like impulses of time and help the observer accept that long periods of time have passed between the scenes. The movements of the two women, the occupation, the exploration of their surrounding field; their own bodies exist in an apparent weightlessness of a non-resonating space.

The artist pair Woergoetter/Hoess are engaged in direct and complete distinctions of certain situations in their work, which are evoked through precise arrangements. In the work presented here, it was important for the artists that the two women did not know each other and could not communicate linguistically. They produced their work with the help of two persons, who were approached on the street, where knowledge of the native language of the other partner was not known in each case. Thus two women enter, an Asian and a west European, into the prepared space. Separately and in complete darkness. (Suess)

During the filming the two women received verbal statements in their respective native language. The space is a reconstruction, a stage set, which the artists deemed suitable, for the process, to immanently produce the result; the intensive representation of agreement and discrepancy of bodies. (Suess)

Specifications

42min 20sec no sound bw PAL

Technical protocol

CCD-Infrared-security camera (recording); Video-Home-System (VHS/back up media); Media 100 (computer editing); Beta SP (master)

Produced together with

Actors: Nahoko Nishi Murh; Ingrid Reisetbauer

Production

Alex Hoess, Markus Wörgötter

Post production

Zone, Wien

Sponsorship

Basis Wien; Bundeskuratorin für Kunst Lioba Reddeker

Edition

Basis Wien

Copyright

Markus Wörgötter/Alex Hoess

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