arbeit / schoenheit (labor)
labour / beauty (laboratory)
sound + videoinstallation
03/02
ex-gdr broadcaststudios, berlin (videostill: the artist)
one possible way of understanding karl valentins famous dictum „art is beautiful, but makes a lot of work“ leaves open the question, for whom art is beautiful, and who has to do all that work.
usually we put the work on the side of the author and the beauty on the resulting work. but if we include the visitor into our considerations, the sentence allows several permutations of asscription, each producing a meaning of its own.
this ambiguity is the point of departure for arbeit / schoenheit (labor):
climbing up a narrow stair towards a very bright light might be the amount of work everybody has to invest, while the sounds of theis work are transformed and projected back into the space.
arrived on top, work and sound stop, and one finds onself watching a silent video which shows the person ascending the stairs. is this the beauty-part?
