The camera is invading an over-stuffed apartment, floating through an almost surreal material world. There is a presence of the real tenant, supposedly an old man, who we don’t get to see. Instead, a younger man in search of a place to rest is wandering about.The rooms reveal the standstill of a lonley person, who has separated himself from life and the outside world by pileing up consumer objects. A glance out of the window shows a formerly fancy boulevard in Brussels, ruled today by Moroccan traders and African immigrants.

Two men walk through a former hospital.The camera follows one man until he comes across the other. Their meetings vary from distant and casual to friendly and intimate. The state of the empty building changes very suddendly: it’s falling apart.

performer: Rüdiger Böß, Marco Zbinden

sounddesign: Thomas Jeker

nominated for ‘Basler Filmpreis 2009′, category ‘videoart’

Second part of a trilogy that has been filmed in Egypt, Hong Kong and Belgium.
On the former Hong Kong city airport the camera is panning slowly in a circle. The runways were turned into bus parkings. The city is spreading out and little by little taking over. High rising buildings are about to be constructed all around. A few men and objects share this still remote area in silence.

In this video installation we see different places of a city. In slow horizontal movements the camera pans across façades and greenery. It’s like an extended moment in the summer, at sunset, when a strong light is hitting the sceneries almost horizontally and dividing them in light and dark zones. People traverse from light to dark or vice versa, as if the overstepping of this border was something very significant or magical. The dark zones are getting only a dimension through the actors’ movements. They become figures appearing or disappearing from further away, from the depth of an undefined black space behind the façades. One could call it backstage or behind the scenes, where a parallel world seems to exist. It’s something like a time- and spaceless existence, where humans come from and go back into.

Rencontres Internationales Paris Berlin, projection ‘The ground is moving’, Centre Pompidou, Paris, November 2011

First part of a trilogy that has been filmed in Egypt, Hong Kong and Belgium.

Outside of Luxor the eye moves in a slow circle. People are standing in the desert, alone or in groups. Tourists descend from the sky in a large red balloon. The camera’s perspective corresponds to the gaze of a foreigner having a look around. A couple of details sail past, without for all that rendering the situation as a whole perceptible. The eye wanders on across the surface of the desert. Urban settlements come into view. An arrival is summed up in one long, slow pan, a touchdown on a strange planet, recounted from a horizontal perspective only gradually closing the gap between itself and its object.

1. Prize SCOPE Subject/Art Basel 2010, videoart

Starting point is the legend of Sinbad and his journeys on the sea. What would Sinbad get to see if he’d be travelling nowadays? The cooperation of the Egyptian musician and the Swiss video artist combines two different view points: Ahmad El-Sawy has transferred Arabic poems into music. Some of those texts can be read as comment about our times dispite the fact that they originate from past centuries. The writers talk about home, rich and poor, religion and most importantly about the loss of the own culture.
Christoph Oertli has shot video images during two longer stays in Egypt and compressed these images into a visual strand, which resembles a journey through different centuries: landscapes, urban scenes and ultramodern building complexes slowly drift past the camera. A young man embodies todays’ Sinbad; occasionally he’s travelling within his own country, but he undertakes as well virtual journeys at his computer, since means and possibilities are missing for travelling abroad.

Two parallel images show a woman in relation with an exhibited object. An attempt to catch some of the essence of ‘being alive’.

performer: Chun-Hwei Lin

The camera eye is overlooking one day of Taxila’s life. She walks in the street, sits with friends at the table, goes to sleep, climbs at night out of the window and approaches a tree in the courtyard. By looking back, internal and external voices mix to an incomplete report. The smile of the afternoon faces the dark front of humans, who used to be close friends.

performer: Danaé Verlet, Tristan Christann, Ursula Llewelyn, Usman Saeed, Ryad Slimani, Akira Tsukada

sounddesign: Thomas Jeker

Christoph Oertli’s video shows a person walking very slowly through the bustling city, quiet suburbs and peaceful rooftops of Cairo. As the districts change, so does the walker who continues his measured pace while observing the world around him without interaction. The environmental sound changes from noisy traffic to silence (d/Art/07 Sydney).

performer: Mohammed Aladin, Mazin Algizoly, Omar Ghayatt, Adham Hafez, Diyaaldin Helmy, Roby, Mohammed Sadik, Tarek Shalaby, Mohammed Roshdy.

1er prix Vidéoformes, Clermont-Ferrand/France (2008)

Series of short videos interpreting pop songs: ‘Song for Alice’ by Keren Ann.

Alice: The sequence shot evokes a street at night and a fire of which one believes responsible a homeless woman. An installation with suspended hairdryers and flying plastic bags as stagecraft elements.

performer: Christoph Oertli