Two men, the artist duo, move to an unspecified non-Western culture. They put the camera at a fixed position. They implement themselves, as if they were photoshopped, in everyday situations and environments. In people’s homes, on a street corner, in a landscape. They stand still, dressed in suits, and stare at us. Their environment is aware of their presence but seems to remain themselves to some extent, doing as they always do. It doesn’t quite work. An alienating field of tension arises for both those between whom they move and for the viewer. They keep looking straight into the camera. Slowly but surely, their presence breaks down any documentary objectivity. Even if they don’t intervene. Precisely because they do not intervene. Even if they don’t say anything. Precisely because they say nothing. The length of their stay forces a step-by-step accumulation of associations and questions. Herein lies their villainous derangement.

Together, the video installations form a largely tacit dead pan comedy about arriving and taking position but never actually arriving. A primal comedy about the intrinsic impossibility of understanding, let alone describing, another culture in a way that is impersonal and unbiased and does justice to the complexity of any reality whatsoever. That says something about the promised land instead of the visitor. A demonstration of historical inability and incurable ignorance. A warning against political or colonial complacency.

A representation of the endearingness of entering into that description after all, the hilarious attempt to provide insight into the internal architecture of a society other than one’s own. About the danger of the arrogance of thinking as an outsider of having to give a people a stage that they themselves do not ask for, not realizing that they already see themselves in a way that we will never know. The fruitless tragedy of forcing an unspontaneous presentation, the portrait, the speech, the gaze into a foreign camera. About the political misconception that ‘knowing’ only comes from visibility.

A ridicule of a flown-in civilization that confuses politeness, wonder and modesty with closeness. A choreography of platitudes in the midst of a search for archetypes that the visitor, more than the inhabitant, needs. An almost coquettish demonstration of the confusing notions of ‘approach’ and ‘approach’. A tantalizing parody of the romance of the citizen of the world who remains a tourist, even when dressed in a two-piece suit. The anthropologist, the diplomat, the correspondent, the businessman, the infiltrator, interchangeable and reduced to the representative of “idleness”. Brutal in its tenacious form, shameless in its precision, very funny in its deadpan and clumsy performance. A vain attempt at ‘stories’, foiled by itself. I watched, I listened, I read. I was forced into complicity. I did not understand what I encountered, I saw what cannot be understood.

Mvl