we will act as if we are not there

About

Marianne Halter addresses in her work repeatedly issues of spaces and their corporate and social functions. She explores them by means of photographic, moving and drawn images as well as text fragments and links them together to create atmospherically dense installations.
By restaging familiar motifs and everyday observations, doubt is spread upon the supposedly obvious images that opens them up for reinterpretations. The importance of spaces as a stage and projection room for constant selfassertion of individuals and entire societies is subtly thematized and questioned by Marianne Halters approach.

The theoretical base for the solo exhibition Wir tun einfach, als ob wir nicht da sind (engl.: we will act as if we are not there) are extreme conditions in civilization and nature. Tilting moments, in which the achievements of civilization falter or even collapse. Not the real catastrophe is in the foreground, but the expansion of the moment before, respectively the possible catharsis thereafter. This contrasts with the model of an individual – just like in the exhibited Video Hin und zurück (engl.: There and Back Again) by Marianne Halter and
Mario Marchisella, 2015 – which for no apparent reason receives applause from a anonymous audience. The Individual transforms into a prototype and thereby becomes an universal comment, a reflexive meta level - very similar to the chorus in Greek tragedy.

Thanks for support to the Swiss Arts Council pro helevtia.