In the interactive video performance Wo Bilder sind, ist Angst gewesen (Where Images Are, Fear Has Been), a firearm is screwed to a pedestal. When the Walther CP88 is touched, a shot is fired and the life-size projected human falls out of the picture.
»(…) This work can be regarded as the artist’s radical extension of the modern aesthetic reflection on the largely warlike eternal triangle between the artist, art and the observing or paying consumer; as an interactive, experimental arrangement which in its moment of accomplishment — the reciprocal interaction between art observer, art object and image — produces the unattaina- bility of real sensation, real sense of touch and of being touched by and through art. Berchtold steers the popular reasons for the eternal misunderstanding between art, artist and art public in a serious direction with “What you have killed, you should also love”.
The eternal triangle of work of art, artist and observer does not function as a trio. However, as a non-functioning entity, it becomes coherent. One has to die, and the stratum for the dead and the excluded is the image. And even here, on the issue of whether images segregate or remove us, or whether they provide us with an essential shelter lacking within normal social frameworks, Berchtold takes the level of reflection higher than usual to demonstrate that the question of medium is irrelevant, as long as the meta-medium of ‘human senses’ remains the basis for excursions into the abstract, virtual and digital.
Berchtold traces the implicitness behind the fact that still, it is our skin — the paradox of touch and being touched — that acts as the secret centre of all objectification. However, we have reached a state of evolution where without the prosthesis of image, we can no longer be sure of what we bring about by touching – we have to see because we can no longer feel.
Furthermore, the certainty of our knowledge that we are material bodies that depend on the existence of the material body and its specific form of organisation appears to have disappeared, or more accurately, to have been perverted. The materiality of the body seems to be dependant on knowledge/meaning — in short, on the image of the body — rather than vice versa. Perhaps it is the real effective dream of all visions of media interactivity — to achieve a direct penetration to the reality of the image. This can be felt by its absence in the installation.
Berchtold’s Where Images Are, Fear Has Been crosses over into a reminder of Vico’s maxim that mankind only experiences what it really does – the creation of reality increasingly occurs in images of reality just as the old dichotomy of real/virtual is experiencing a renaissance increasingly on the side of the virtual. We do not know exactly what is happening. Will a reality remain which does not release any of the possible realities from their subordinate status? Or is reality changing to become a possibility among many other possibilities — and is therefore becoming more unrealistic? Between these questions, Berchtold’s work opens an ‘in-between’ horizon in which even death itself is only possible if people move towards it. (…)«
Bernd Ternes
Excerpt from: »Metaesthetics of touch and misrecognition in the work
‘Where Images Are, Fear Has Been’ by Stefan Berchtold«
Translation from German: Lucy Renner Jones
Where Images Are, Fear Has Been | Video projection 260x340cm, Walther CP88, MDF, pedestal, touch sensor, computer, amplifier, speakers
Artist Statement:
Two facts surprised me:
First, all the visitors laughed after they heard the shot. I found this a bit strange and installed a surveillance camera. Because of the projection, the room was darkened and the entrance was curtained off. When visitors enter the room alone and trigger the shot, there is no laughter. Only when they leave the room, the first encounter with other people takes place, then they laugh.
Second: If several people enter the room, then most of the visitors act reserved. They do not touch the gun, but they wait to see what happens. Sooner or later, someone more impatient comes and touches the gun. The shot is fired. The protagonist in the film collapses, hit. Silence. Seven out of 10 people hold out their arm with their index finger extended and say, »He (or she) did it.«
I am inclined to suspect that the laughter assumes, among other things, the function of an apology.
seen @ 4. Berliner Kunstsalon, Neue Kunsthalle Berlin
Photo: Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag