program

Enter 2 Installations	3/10 - 4/17/1994
		Womb Wars, Tales from the Chopping Cart
Exhibition with Todt and Barney W. Haynes The pictures in the works of the American Midwestern group TODT and the Californian Haynes alone are difficult to comprehend. The only way to decipher the connections is by personally and actively jumping into the works and walking through and using them. 'WombWars' from the collective TODT and 'Tales from the Shopping Cart' from Barney W. Haynes are two completely different installations. The one is clinically sterile, cold and perfectly calculated. The other has no visible order, is an accumulation of things that have been robbed of their function but that are clearly the legacies of a consumer oriented society. The installations share an intermediate atmosphere and give the viewer a rattling feeling of the loss of sense and subtance. 'WombWars', a room within a room, is a multimedia system. By entering a frame with different levels and gangways, the viewer steps into a labyrinth of light boxes, lenses and monitors. The individual elements are connected to each other and are controlled through video. Different objects from the medical, technical and video sectors are tied together and produce this open system of esthetic mobility. The opinion of TODT is that our bodies no longer belong to us. We are increasingly losing the control over our own biology, and the state has the possibility, even before birth, to penetrate into all concerns of the individual. The human body has become the scene of a constant battle. After many projects in the USA, the group TODT achieved international recognition through exhibits in Tokyo and at the Biennale, 1993 in Venice. 'Tales from the Shopping Cart' is a computer controlled, interactive laserdisc installation. In abandoned surroundings the visiter finds different objects, all marked with U.P.C. codes. A bar code scanner is used to decipher the objects. Each object opens a new picture capital on the laserdisc. This in turn becomes visible in the shopping cart, which is equipped with a monitor. The viewers push the carts and scan the codes. They determine the speed and direction. Thus they control the sequence and course of the connected clips. In his works Haynes uses as well pictures of the human body. These very close and intimate photos raise the question of the unlimited availability of the person in a endlessly consuming society.