Excerpt from Acting alone together
An essay by Harm Lux (independent curator, Berlin/Zurich) published in Christian Niccoli - Escalating perception, Edition Salon Verlag, Cologne, 2006
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The eyes of the two protagonists of Die Umarmung (The hug) convey a bleak "looking-outward", not a "being-inside-oneself" nor a "being-with-others". You are so distant, but nonetheless: Hug me, even from a distance, embrace me, even if it means nothing to you, hug me.
Baby, I never wanna let you go, let's sing, let's swing… We know the difference between reality and a song or a video image, but can a remote control switch on the emotional hot spots of the other? Or does this refer to one's own emotional space, one's own turning off and on, a permanent channel-hopping? Does the channel-hopping-culture, the culture of continuous change, allow us to engage seriously with what is on offer? Can we still permit closeness and affection at all?
What can I built upon? On my own imagination transmitting to others only my media clichés, those pre-produced emotions from a can? Am I no longer capable of naming the difference between a natural feeling and self-alienation? How much can they be allowed to, how much can they, how much do they still differ? Until the eighteenth century a focus on other cultures was believed to be divisive. Today, we ask ourselves, what our emotions and thoughts tell us, what we children of the information age feel when we look into each other's eyes, chest to chest, head on shoulder, the remote control pointing at the screen, ready at any moment to turn it off.
©2007 christian niccoli. all rights reserved