Peggy Ahwesh Oliver van den Berg Wafaa Bilal ... - Mathildenhöhe

= Smith, John
Hotel Diaries
Video series
Frozen War
2001, video, color, 11 min.
Throwing Stones
2004, video, color, 11 min.
Courtesy of the artist
Made over six years in the hotels of six different
countries, Hotel Diaries is a series
of video recordings, which relate personal
experiences to the current conflicts in
the Middle East. Playing upon chance and
co-incidence, the hotel room is employed
as a “found” film set, where the architecture,
furnishing, and decoration become the
means by which the filmmaker’s small adventures
are linked to major world events.
The following two works are being shown
in the exhibition:
Frozen War (Ireland, October 8, 2001).
A disorienting experience while attempting
to watch the TV news in an Irish hotel
room triggers a spontaneous response to
the bombing of Afghanistan.
Throwing Stones (Switzerland, November
13, 2004). As the camera looks out
through a barred window and the clock
strikes four in a Swiss city, the death of
Yasser Arafat provides the starting point
for a journey back in time.
Production note
= Square => Quadratisch
Everything is true in the offensive of direct
broadcasting, “true” in the instrumental
sense of the term, that is to say, operationally
and immediately efficacious. The audiovisual
landscape becomes a “landscape
of war” and the screen a squared horizon,
overexposed with video salvos, like the field
of battle under the fire of missiles.
Much more than a tele-audition (Radio
London during the German occupation, for
example) or a tele-vision (CBS, ABC, NBC,
etc., during the Vietnam War), it is now a
matter of a tele-action, where the opposing
parties are engaged in an absolute interactive
situation, before the eyes of all, thanks
to the broadcast transmissions of TV networks,
CCN among others.
In this sudden war of real time, as in the
real space of the Gulf, the means matter
little—satellite, TV, missiles, tanks—since
all that matters is the end. The morality of
the end justifies all the mediated or political
means, but this end is no longer that of a
conflict concerning this or that country; it is
John Smith *1952 in Walthamstow, Großbritannien / Great Britain
Film- und Videokünstler und Hochschullehrer an der University of East London / Film and video artist and
scholar at the University of East London; lebt in London / lives in London.
Einzelausstellungen (Auswahl) / Solo exhibitions (selection): Accident, Kunstbunker, Nürnberg / Nuremberg
2010; John Smith, Royal College of Art Galleries, London 2010; Flag Mountain / Black Tower, Tanya Leighton
Gallery, Berlin 2010; Worst Case Scenario, Gallery 210, St. Louis, Mo. 2010; I’m Lying, I Promise, Sala Diaz
Gallery, San Antonio, Tex., 2010.
Gruppenausstellungen (Auswahl) / Group exhibitions (selection): A Million and One Days, International Ex-
hibition of Film & Video Art, Lithuanian National Gallery of Art, Wilna, Litauen / Vilnius, Lithuania 2010;
I Must Say that at First It Was Difficult Work, Kunsthall Oslo, Oslo 2010; 6th Berlin Biennial, KW Institute for
Contemporary Art, Berlin 2010; The Talent Show, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MoMA PS1, New York
2010; After Architects, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel 2010.
www.johnsmithfilms.com
John Smith, Hotel Diaries: Throwing Stones, 2004
John Smith, Hotel Diaries: Frozen War, 2001
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