Information
Paul Sermon >
»A Body of Water«, 1999 - 1999
Co-Workers & Funding:
Co-Author: Andrea Zapp Co-Worker: Joel Slayton
Technology
Hardware
1 x Blue box wall and floor 6 x Black monitor plinth box
2 x Black curtains
8 x White neon strip light with shade
3 x Video camera ceiling/wall mount
2 x Video projector ceiling/wall mount
High pressure water vapour shower heads and hosepiping
Video cable 500 meter (black) RG59 and BNC crimp plugs
Hardware
3 x 3CCD Digital Video Camera 1 x Panasonic WJ-MX50 Chroma-Keyer - digital video mixer
6 x 30" Video Monitor
1 x VHS Video Player - auto repeat function
2 x NEC - LCD Video Projector
2 x Video Distribution Amplifier
Hardware
2 x Tandberg Vision 2000, 384 Kbit/s video conference codec 3 x 64 Kbit ISDN line - Duisburg
3 x 64 Kbit ISDN line - Herten
248 hour 384 Kbit/s ISDN connection between Duisburg and Herten
Descriptions & Essays
The powerful social aspect of Sermons work is visualized in the site-specific installation A Body of Water (1999), created for the exhibition Connected Cities, which has an atmosphere that borders on the eerie. In a chroma-key room set up in Duisburgs Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, visitors mingle virtually with visitors to the second location of the installation: a miners changing room, the Waschkaue, at a disused mine in Herten. Projected onto one side of a gauzy pyramids of a water screen, images of the Duisberg museum visitors became concrete and realistic presences in the Waschkaue, while onto the other side, historic film material of miners showering is projected. The installation recalls a telematic art classic, Whole in Space (1980) by Kid Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz. Initially, it was used quite spontaneously by passers-by but as the exhibition progressed it inspired highly imaginative telecommunication: parties, family reunions, even showing the latest addition to the family to far-of relatives. This strategy of confronting groups of people geographically far apart attains an explosive sociopolitical dimension when people from radically different cultures or social backgrounds encounter each other, almost intimately, in an image space. In the darkness of a derelict industrial building, Paul Sermon created a work whose effect was both evocative and vivid. An imaginary space for remembering generations of miners who, after toiling underground, washed the coal dust from their hard-working bodies there. Thus Sermon adds a dimension of social critique to his visual strategy in this installation with its disturbing intimacy.A site-specific telematic installation linking the shower room of the Ewald/Schlaegel und Eisen mine in Herten with the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg. The images of visitors in the shower room in Herten are mixed with images of the Museum visitors in Duisburg and appear on one side of a water screen. Historical film footage of miners showering are projected onto the other side of the water screen. Realised for the Connected Cities Exhibition, Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum Duisburg in Germany, June 20th to August 1st 1999 (catalogue printed).
Paul Semon and Andrea Zapp - June 1999
Photography by Frank Schuberth
Statement by Mathias Fuchs
Literature
Morse, Margaret. »Paul Sermon - Holder of ZKM Stipend 1993.« .
Exhibitions & Events