14 Minuten im Leben von
Richard Kriesche
14 Minuten im Leben von, 1977
"Videodemonstration Nr. 28"
Audio-video-installation 5 video monitors 5 video players 5 videos, black and white, sound, 14 min (loop) 5 brass plates with engraved days of the week
GF0002182.00.0-2000
Artwork text
This audio/video installation demonstrates work/industrial work in a real situation. “Work in real situation” high-lights industrial work as a simultaneous audio and video event in its real, i. e., long-term dimension. The installa-tion 14 Minutes in the Life of… subsumes 14 minutes of working time in a single week in the Puch bicycle factory in the district of Thondorf in Graz. At the center of the installation is the technical recording and storage medium. At its center, in turn, “in the heart of the technological center,” so to speak, a woman is working. Analogous to the technological storage medium of video, this woman is the biological storage for her own work. (Richard Kriesche) Video reference versus reality reference 1. Video reference as time reference: Temporal sequencing is turned into simultaneous juxtaposition by means of video. It is not that the invisible is made visible (that would be an extension of the eye), but the already visible is made understandable (an extension of the imagination). 2. Reality reference: Video is used to observe or watch over reality references. The task of art in reality refer-ence must be, for instance, to follow the deciphering of the standpoint of surveillance and the deciphering of the social field of reference in which art itself is embedded. 3. Project 14 Minutes in the Life of… is footage of a workplace for 14 minutes each day from Monday to Friday. In the presentation, the 14 minutes per day are shown simultaneously on five video units. There is almost noth-ing for the eye to see. These 14 Minutes in the Life of… have been recorded for people’s awareness. The eye has become a surveillance instrument; at best, it notices differences. Difference is the formal means and thus the criterion for the reality reference (i. e., the life of… self) and the criterion for the video reference (the work presented in Forum Stadtpark). Video reference and reality reference coincide in the project when we are not able to see any differences within the 14 Minutes in the Life of… or allow that such situations are without differences. (RK)