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Indepth Arts News:
"Flucht: A Video-Sound-Installation by Tony Oursler"
2001-07-27 until 2001-08-28
Kunsthaus Bregenz
Bregenz, ,
AT
The video-sound-installation FLUCHT on the glass facade of the Kunsthaus Bregenz is the second
spectacular large project by Tony Oursler in the public space following THE INFLUENCE MACHINE, which – as
in London and New York – casts a spell on the passersby by means of connecting powerful video images
with the sound of human voices. In the Bregenz video project, Oursler, for the first time, integrates various
dialects into his texts which are spoken by several different actors.
Video is like water“, says Tony Oursler, “an entirely ethereal form which was locked into the television for 50
years.“ Since 1992, Oursler (born 1957 in New York) has been working with cloth dolls onto whose pillow-like
heads he projects video-faces. The theme of these works - in which Oursler freed his art from the screen
and took the step toward video-sculpture - is the influence of mass media on the human psyche. His figures
are hidden underneath pieces of furniture or crouch in the corners of rooms and tell stories. Doing so, they
grumble, scream, scold, and incessantly spout sentence fragments.
Last autumn, Tony Oursler realized one of his first installations outside of an exhibition space. He
researched his project “The Influence Machine” for two years, studying in which way people use modern
technology for occult purposes. He projected large faces of spiritualists and of actors onto trees, building
façades and artificial fog on two centrally located, public spaces in New York and London. Voices sounded
from the façades, from a rhythmically blinking streetlight and out of the trees, reciting sentences by Oursler
and texts from the history of electronic engineering.
The projection onto the entire lakeside glass façade of the Kunsthaus is made by four special projectors. To
achieve a distortion-free 78 x 75 feet picture, it was necessary to erect two 48 feet high scaffold towers.
Sound is transmitted over loudspeakers in the façade and special loudspeakers on the roof of the
Kunsthaus.
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