Unexpected Obstacles opening at ZKM Media Museum

BY PERRY HOBERMAN


Date: 5.18.98
From: hoberman@bway.net
Subject: Unexpected Obstacles opening at ZKM Media Museum

UNEXPECTED OBSTACLES: WORK BY PERRY HOBERMAN 1982-98 OPENS AT ZKM MEDIA MUSEUM 29 MAY 1998

The visitors to this retrospective are heading for unfamiliar experiences with superficially familiar objects. Film sequences, advertising slogans, kitchen appliances, and last but not least familiar computer monitors are displaced from their usual context and are arranged in surprisingly novel ways that are highly imaginative. Perry Hoberman uses these objects as a starting point for developing totally new aesthetic systems of interrelations.

In "Dead Space/Living Rooms," for example, film stills and fragments of sound tracks from long forgotten movies spring to life again as huge 3D projections. In the interactive installation "Faraday's Garden" the whole arsenal of electrical household equipment comprising mixers, shavers and fans turns into a kind of mechanical ballet. Starting up this kinetic sculpture follows a hidden pattern and takes the viewers in an almost ghostlike choreography through the room.

Perry Hoberman is an absolute expert in handling the full potential of the new media in order to create representative new spaces for observation. In his works the haptic character of objects is placed in juxtaposition with the volatility of images. He contrasts the cold presentation of a virtual reality with imaginative dreams. In this way he expresses his comment on the euphoria of many progressive utopias in both a nostalgic and satiric way.

http://www.zkm.de/hoberman/

 


Référence: http://www.rhizome.org/cgi-local/query.cgi?action=grab_object&kt=kt1136