knowbotic research “huwwara_anybody, looking”
Shedhalle / Exhibitions / Cross-fades / Artists
knowbotic research “huwwara_anybody, looking”, 2010 (videostill)
huwwara_anybody, looking
Computer installation and video installation, 25 min, 2010
It is a minor venue of contemporary history from which “huwwara_ anybody, looking” starts out: Huwwara, an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank; a place where similar scenes repeat themselves, again and again, which we, with the help of the global media, witness – and don’t, at the same time. The computer installation draws on the videotaping of an Israeli news broadcast circulating on YouTube. It shows a twelve-year-old suicide assassin who, for reasons unknown, does not ignite his bombing belt and, therefore, can be disarmed by a robot. The installation stages this story digitally and juxtaposes it with a second picture that shows an infra-red shot of a (Palestinian) city.
The video, however, does not show the disarmament, youngster and computer melt to become some kind of super-machine being – like we see them in computer war games that mingle militaristic fantasies with boys’ dreams. From the off, a voice is commenting the scene: “Not, looking me, anybody just looking.” The audience intervenes in this watching or non-watching by moving around the room. By moving around, the audience, but hardly realising it, influences the sequence of the pictures. “huwwara_anybody, looking” illustrates two things: On the one hand, there is the historic conflict that could not be solved so far and the repeatability of which has gained mythical dimensions. The powerful pictures re-stage this mythical militarism. In the other hand, this myth is broken. The audience’s interventions show that history always is something that can be represented in various ways and, thus, renders the seemingly mythical unchangeable changeable.