SELINE BAUMGARTNER

The Kitchen NYC,

LUMBERYARD Contemporary Performing Arts production.

Vicky Shick’s dances are a little bit like silent family movies, a series of scenes from a life, edited together in no apparent order. There are funny bits and sad bits and quiet bits, and even the odd intimate moment. You can sort of guess at what’s being said or left unsaid, or what’s going on just beyond the frame. It’s a world of women – perhaps its inhabitants are sisters or friends or lovers or neighbors or, who knows?

Let it Linger, Shick’s new work, performed at The Kitchen as part of the LUMBERYARD Contemporary Performing Arts series, has all these elements, plus a new one: a video of an abandoned zoo by Seline Baumgartner, a Swiss video artist. There is also a little promontory at the back of the stage, made up of rolls of grass, the kind people lay out on their lawns. Like the little table that makes an appearance, these are elements of life: nature, the kitchen, the trees. The designs are by Baumgartner as well.

DanceTabs

The project TIME TO LOSE explores the boundaries and transitions between individual behavior and group dynamics, and poses questions about the formation of identity and history, as well as questions of authorship.

The dancers are standing in a raw in an empty parking lot, while fragments of Jerusalem landscape are seen in the background. One movement transforms into another, mistranslated as a sort of “Telephone Game”. The sound of the videos is minimal, almost whisper like: street noises and the footsteps and clapping of the dancers. The audience can hear the dancers reading excerpts of personal stories via headphones.
The dancers' movements are based on these personal stories, collected from Jerusalem residents and adapted into short choreographic pieces. Five dancers chose a story and designed the movements that were later danced and reinterpreted by the other dancers, based on their individual styles and their ability to memorize.

The storytellers come from various background: an ultra orthodox woman who speaks about a childhood memory, and an ex soldier who's experience from the army hides a trauma within mundane apathy. The story of the two wives of a man who works in the garage next door to the gallery, an anti occupation activist that discloses the fear and violence of her reality, and a love story seen from the eyes of a neighbor. These five stories that were chosen, told originally in three languages, in no way represent the people of Jerusalem or their daily life. They are but intimate moments from a complex and loaded reality.

During the time of the production, violence broke out yet again in Jerusalem. The seemingly naive and mundane moments in the stories, translated to poetic choreographic manifestation, became a sharper reflective mirror in this light. They enabled an almost meditative space of collaborative listening, that in moments of conflict become so rare.

Text: Maayan Sheleff

TIME TO LOSE was originally created at the international residency program of the Art Cube Artists’ studios, Jerusalem

Curator: Maayan Sheleff

“You don’t see Seline Baumgartner in her art, at least not directly: you see instead her steady gaze, those warm eyes open and trained on others. In her recent videos Baumgartner has been collaborating with New York dance royalty: Sally Gross, Meg Harper, Jon Kinzel, Keith Sabado, Vicky Shick and Robert Swinston. None of these performers are young, a fact that has been made much of in most of the writing about this body of work. But this fact is almost entirely uninteresting, really, other than what it reveals about tedious Western expectations around bodies. The real point here isn’t age, but experience, and how it deepens artistry. Small, subtle shifts of weight, of gaze, of intensity, these all take on outsize implications—the point is never what these individuals do, but how. Baumgartner gives the space for these implications to ripple out, overlap, interrupt…creating the most satisfying sort of portrait, the non-narrative one.

There are many complicated intellectual scaffolds one can erect around the intersection between camera and body. But there are also wordless pleasures. All that the doer does. All that the seer perceives. This is something besides. The way time moves, catches, redirects. The frame is full; and then it is empty.” - Excerpt from a text by Claudia La Rocco

hhh-hhh-hhh-hhh... Wir sehen und hören zunächst dasselbe: Sanft rollt Welle um Welle gegen den verlassenen Strand und zieht sich wieder zurück - als ob das Meer atmen würde. Dann schreiten vier Tänzer ins Bild, eingemummt in Jacken und Mützen. Nun scheinen sie diejenigen zu sein, deren Atemzüge wir - mal locker, mal gepresst, mal pfeifend, mal gurgelnd - hören, während sie in wechselnden Konstellationen zu immer neuen Bewegungsabläufen ansetzen, ohne jedoch über kurze Sequenzen hinauszukommen. Auch hier überlagern sich Bild und Ton, verstärken sich und lassen gleichzeitig durch feine akustische und optische Interferenzen deutlich werden, dass die Atemgeräusche doch nicht von den Tänzern, sondern aus einer anderen Quelle stammen. Wer führt hier die Choreografie? Was wird gespielt? Imitieren die Figuren die aus dem Meer aufragenden verrotteten Holzpfähle? Den Kran eines am fernen Horizont vor sich hindümpelnden Lastkahns? Oder das Rollen der Wellen? Letztlich ist es gleichgültig. ‹Before the Future› erzählt keine schlüssige Geschichte. Und erst im Close-up erkennen wir: Die Tänzer sind nicht mehr jung und doch sind die Gesichter im Abendrot voll pulsierenden Lebens.

Zeit wird im Alltag meist als Verlust - vergangen - oder als Versprechen für die Zukunft wahrgenommen. Doch Seline Baumgartner, (*1980), die diesjährige Preis- trägerin der Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim-Stiftung, spürt in ihren Werken einer anderen Qualität von Zeit nach. Sie schildert Momente der Intimität, der Begegnung, der Trennung, des Innehaltens und des Glücks, wenn hier bspw. die letzten Sonnenstrahlen des Tages eines der Gesichter am Strand zum Leuchten bringen. Der Titel des Videos bezieht sich auf ein Buch des italienischen Philosophen und Medienkritikers Franco Berardi ‹After the Future›. Zukunftslosigkeit bedeutet bei Baumgartner allerdings nicht Melancholie, sondern Widerstand.

Textausschnitt: Claudia Jolles, Kunstbulletin 3/2015

2015 (Detroit)

Video HD, 15:18 min. 

The artist lays bare traces and stories. Thus, in the video Belle Isle, Seline Baumgartner visits an abandoned zoo. Nature has long since reconquered her terrain there. Static shots accord to a story told offscreen, without mawkishness, of a friend who suffers from bipolar disorder. It is an impressive testimony that the future, without reflecting on the past, is not to be had.

Max Glauner
Excerpt Critics‘ picks ARTFORUM, Solo exhibition Before the Future, 2015

Der Protagonist im Video ‹Belle Isle›, 2015 erzählt aus dem Off von seiner bipolaren Störung, der Zwangseinlieferung in eine amerikanische Klinik und schildert seine Auflehnung gegen eine Gesellschaft, in der «psychische Instabilität eine Straftat ist». Gleichzeitig gleitet die Kamera in langsamer Fahrt durch einen verlassenen ZOO auf der Insel Belle Isle in Detroit, zeigt zerfallene Gehege und überwucherte Publikumsstege.

Textausschnitt: Claudia Jolles, Kunstbulletin 3/2015

BEFORE THE FUTURE, 2015

Solo exhibition at Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zurich. Dr. Georg and Josi Guggenheim Foundation Prize Exhibition

The title of the of the exhibition, evokes the broader ecstasies of time, past and present. A fulfilled present cannot be established without the past. The works presented here insist upon this.

The Minimalist installation As Everything Fades (Packard Plant) consists of several hundred parquet blocks from Albert Kahn’s automobile factory—which has since been torn down—stapled to the wall.

Max Glauner
Excerpt Critics‘ picks ARTFORUM, Solo exhibition Before the Future, 2015

Etwas abstrakter wirkt die Installation ‹As Everything Fades› mit verkohlten Bodenklötzen aus einer der ersten, mittlerweile stillgelegten Autoproduktionsstätten in Detroit. Auch dieses Versprechen hat seine Zukunft hinter sich. Doch Baumgartner zeigt auf, wie sich vor den russgeschwängerten Zerfallsspuren eine andere, möglicherweise weniger materielle Welt imaginieren lässt: indem sie die Teile auf- und umschichtet - und so wieder mit Atem füllt.

Textausschnitt: Claudia Jolles, Kunstbulletin 3/2015

BEFORE THE FUTURE, 2015

Solo exhibition at Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zurich. Dr. Georg and Josi Guggenheim Foundation Prize Exhibition

EVERYTHING FADES WHILE WE TURN AWAY
2015 (PACKARD PLANT)

Prints: 63cm x 78cm, 63cm x 78cm
Scans of surfaces at the packard plant in Detroit.

The magical series of C-prints Everything Fades While We Turn Away (Packard Plant) show further materials found at the Packard Plant, such as charred wood or mattress stuffing, which were recorded with a hand scanner.

Excerpt Critics‘ picks ARTFORUM, Solo exhibition Before the Future, 2015

Max Glauner

Installation: 
2 channel Video 12min. with sound or 3 channel Video with sound
 

Collaboration with the dancers, Meg Harper, Jon Kinzel, Vicky Shick, Keith Sabado

“You don’t see Seline Baumgartner in her art, at least not directly: you see instead her steady gaze, those warm eyes open and trained on others. In her recent videos Baumgartner has been collaborating with New York dance royalty: Sally Gross, Meg Harper, Jon Kinzel, Keith Sabado, Vicky Shick and Robert Swinston. None of these performers are young, a fact that has been made much of in most of the writing about this body of work. But this fact is almost entirely uninteresting, really, other than what it reveals about tedious Western expectations around bodies. The real point here isn’t age, but experience, and how it deepens artistry. Small, subtle shifts of weight, of gaze, of intensity, these all take on outsize implications—the point is never what these individuals do, but how. Baumgartner gives the space for these implications to ripple out, overlap, interrupt…creating the most satisfying sort of portrait, the non-narrative one.

There are many complicated intellectual scaffolds one can erect around the intersection between camera and body. But there are also wordless pleasures. All that the doer does. All that the seer perceives. This is something besides. The way time moves, catches, redirects. The frame is full; and then it is empty.” - Excerpt from a text by Claudia La Rocco

“NOTHING ELSE ”, is an EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission 2013 - 2014, supported by The Jaffe Fund for Experimental Media and Performing Arts.

Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY”

Supported by LMCC Lower Manhattan Cultural Council New York, Workspace Residency

Installation: 2 channel HD Video 8min. with sound



Collaboration with the Hijra Dancer Rosy, the Musician Sumathi Murthy and Pejk Malinovski

Transgender people (Hijras) have a special position in Indian society. On one hand they have the gift to bless people and are therefore invited to dance on weddings and other ceremonies. On the other hand they are pushed out of society. Often times Hijras loose contact to their families and most of them live from sex work or begging.

Based on interviews with the Hijra and Karaga dancer Rosy, the musician Sumathi Murthy wrote and composed a song about Rosy’s life. The video shows Rosy dancing to the song telling the story of her life. The second projection shows an Indian wedding band sitting around at first and then, moved by Rosy’s story playing and engaging with her.

Installation: 2 channel HD Video 12min. with sound

In collaboration with the dancers: 

Meg Harper
Robert Swinston
Vicky Shick
Sally Gross

Seline Baumgartner hat vier ehemalige Tanz-Koryphäen dazu eingeladen, aus ihrem jeweiligen Repertoire eine Choreografie zu entwickeln. Die Künstlerin liess ihnen viel Freiraum; was wir sehen sind grösstenteils Improvisationen der Akteurinnen und Akteure. Diese bewegen sich mit eindrücklicher Präzision und Grazie, wenn auch nicht mehr mit ihrer ursprünglichen Geschmeidigkeit. Die Bilder zeugen vom Mut, sich als bejahrter Tänzer nochmals zu exponieren, vom Prozess des Alterns und dem damit einhergehenden Verlust körperlicher Fähigkeiten. Gleichzeitig setzt diese Arbeit einen Kontrapunkt zu einem allgegenwärtigen Jugendkult und zu allzu engen Vorstellungen davon, was physische Schönheit, Ausdruck und Sinnlichkeit bedeuten. Eleganz, Würde und Ausstrahlung sind unabhängig von Beweglichkeit und Kraft. Im Titel If it is as if it bezieht sich die Künstlerin auf die Poesie von Gertrude Stein. Der Passus entstammt einem Gedicht, in dem die amerikanische Schriftstellerin über die Vergänglichkeit reflektiert. Die Tänzerinnen und Tänzer sind teils ehemalige Mitglieder von Merce Cunnighams Kompanie und die Aufnahmen sind im ehemaligen Tanzstudio dieses Meisters des modernen Tanztheaters entstanden. Die leeren, geschichtsträchtigen Räumlichkeiten mit den stimmungsvollen Ausblicken auf die Stadt New York bilden eine Kulisse, der in ihrer Grosszügigkeit auch eine gewisse Melancholie innewohnt. Die sich einzeln und in Gruppen bewegenden Tänzerinnen und Tänzer scheinen auf sich selber zurück geworfen, wie letzte Zeugen einer einst quirligen Geschehens. Atmosphärisch von grosser Bedeutung für If it is as if it ist der Ton. Momente der Stille und des Klangs sind präzise gesetzt und Seline Baumgartner ist bei der nachträglichen Vertonung der Bilder äusserst subtil vorgegangen. Den experimentellen Charakter des Tanzes hat sie aufgenommen und auch alltägliche Geräusche, wie dasjenige von reissendem Papier, in ihre Klangwelt integriert. So ergibt sich ein eindringlicher Dialog zwischen Bild und Klang.

Madeleine Schuppli

Performance as part of the exhibition:“Social Body“ at Museum Palazzo Ducale, Genova IT

The performance takes place at various locations around and inside the Museum Palazzo Ducale. 14 performers are spread among the visitors to the museum. The performers gather, seemingly at random and begin to form a circle. After a while the circle dissolves again and the performers disappear back into the crowd.

HD Video 8min., color, sound

The artists work moves within an area of tension resulting from movement and stagnation, retardation and éclat. At the same time a playful element is a leitmotif in the artist’s oeuvre. It expresses the “other” space, in which social codes and structures of action might be absorbed and turned around. The artist confronts the seriousness of her chosen topics with a certain lightness of being. For us, the viewers, she opens up an imaginary “possibility-space”, mysterious and enigmatic, that leaves us with the substantial question: Why is it the way it is? And: Couldn’t it be different?

Parachute, bicycle wheels, fan, audio

Audio from the video „Collateral Murder“ a classified US military video published by Wikileaks, depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad during a U.S. military helicopter attack in 2010.
Audiotrack speed reduced. 

The artists work moves within an area of tension resulting from movement and stagnation, retardation and éclat. Her objects hover in a status of indecision, which is manifested in simple figures like the massively overloaded cart. These bodies are in the exact moment of extreme tension or release – just before or after they have collapsed or will burst at the seams. Through her targeted choice of medium and her precise handling of the material, the artist is able to emphasize this ambivalence and fragility. At the same time a playful element is a leitmotif in the artist’s oeuvre. It expresses the “other” space, in which social codes and structures of action might be absorbed and turned around. The artist confronts the seriousness of her chosen topics with a certain lightness of being. For us, the viewers, she opens up an imaginary “possibility-space”, mysterious and enigmatic, that leaves us with the substantial question: Why is it the way it is? And: Couldn’t it be different?

2010/ 2011
HD Video, 3 channel installation, 16:9, color, sound,
40 min, German, Italian subtitles

or

HD Video, 16:9, colour, sound,

30min, German, Italian subtitles

Ten years after the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center, six New Yorkers, most of them actors, collaborated with the artist in a role-play situation, to bring to life their idea of a “terrorist.” They came to the artist’s studio with a character sketch and then, as the ultimate exercise in empathy, submitted to an interview, enacting their own notions of this absolute “other.” Baumgartner documents the creation of a fiction.

The result is a series of surprisingly intimate, moving and even funny double-portraits. We meet an Israeli soldier who kills Palestinians as revenge for the murder of her sister; a radical Pakistani Muslim who receives a vision from God in the desert. And we meet several “home-grown” American terrorists, outcasts who feel left behind by society. What is interesting about these create personas is not just how extraordinarily real they seem, but how they reveal the ambiguous process of inhabiting something completely contrary to ourselves.

Two channal Videoinstallation


Zwei schwarz-weiße Videoprojektionen, im Raum ein zurückhaltender wiederkehrender Ton. Er macht die Szenen mit ihren Pantomimen noch
etwas irrealer. Das pantomimische Spiel scheint bestimmten Regeln zu
folgen, doch nicht alle Bewegungsabläufe klären sich. Zumindest das eine
oder andere Spiel ist wieder zu erkennen. Der ansonsten belustigende
Stuhltanz etwa, auch Reise nach Jerusalem genannt, auf der hinteren
Projektion kann zweifelsfrei benannt werden, doch verliert er seinen unverfänglichen Charakter, weil keine Musik das Spiel begleitet und
kein festlicher Kontext ihn als Unterhaltungselement bestimmt. Mit
einfachen aber wirkungsvollen Maßnahmen hat die Künstierin das ‚Spiel‘ 
auf eine Formel verkürzt, die seine sozio-psychologische Untiefe erahnen
lässt. Auf der kleineren Projektion erscheinen derweil, die Wandprojektion anschneidend, die Gesichter der Spieler oder Personen. Auch wenn
es sich auf beiden Projektionen um dieselben Personen zu handeln
scheint, löst sich das Rätsel der Beziehung der beiden Szenarien nicht
ganz auf: Die Projektionen sind zwar simultan, aber nicht synchron. 
Die leichte Verschiebung erzeugt in dieser überzeugenden
Videoinstallation immer neue Fragen, wie sich wohl individuelles
Verhalten in Gruppen herausschält und wie Identität im sozialen
Gegen- und Miteinander entsteht. Die Ruhe und Verhaltenheit der
Arbeit lässt darüber hinaus die Atmosphäre einer zwischenmenschlichen
 «Utopie» entstehen, als seien soziale Beziehungen jenseits von
Autoritätsdenken und Herrschaftsmustern denkbar. 

Text anlässlich der Ausstellung im Helmhaus Zürich
2010 Daniel Kurjakovic

Videoinstallation
Performance at Coney Island, New York




A Person holding an American flag in her hand
walks into the frame, puts the flag in the sand and starts
circling around it.

2009

Objekt, 250x400cm
Audio: 7-minute loop ( Englisch/ Hindi)
Text: Excerpts from interviews with Indian textile workers.

Somewhere on the other side of the Earth someone is sewing our clothes. We know that the working conditions of people employed in the garment industry are precarious and we think we know the poverty they endure and which the artist encountered during her stay in India. Inspired by the simple carts and their oversize loads "Somewhere on the other side" reflects on the challenges posed by the complexities of globalization. At the same time, it also affords us an extraordinary experience of space: wrapped in sheets of Indian cotton the massive load blocks our way and our view. Facts about underdevelopment and exploitation that we’ve heard so often we no longer even acknowledge them take on a new urgency in Seline Baumgartner’s art. Outsize but alluring the wheeled object entices us to step closer to hear voice inside – the story of an Indian textile worker told in English and Hindi. Somewhere on the other side yet so very close.

Translated text  
Original: Fanni Fetzer

Irgendwo auf der anderen Seite dieser Erde werden unsere Kleider genäht. Dass die Arbeitsbedingungen, der in dieser Industrie beschäftigten Menschen, prekär sind, wissen wir und glauben, die Armut zu kennen, der die Künstlerin während ihres Aufenthalts in Indien begegnete. Inspiriert von einfachen Transportkarren und ihrer überdimensionierten Fuhr thematisiert "Somewhere on the other side" die Überforderung angesichts solcher Kausalitäten, ist aber auch ein räumliche Erfahrung: Die mit indischer Baumwolle zusammengehaltene Ladung verstellt uns Weg und Sicht. Es gelingt Seline Baumgartner, Fakten, die zu hören wir längst müde sind, überraschend und daher interessant in ihrer Kunst zu verarbeiten. Ihr monströses, anziehendes Objekt verführt uns, näher zu treten, um die Stimme im Innern zu hören - in Englisch und Hindi die Erzählung einer indischen Textilarbeiterin. Somewhere on the other side, aber doch ganz nah. 

Text : Fanni Fetzer
 

Video/audio installation, 13-minute loop
Paper object : Hopscotch

Speakers: Anna Müller, Jonas Rüegg

Text by Seline Baumgartner with quotes from The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo



 

In her video installation "Shake Hands with the Devil" Seline Baumgartner examines the question of self-determination through an exploration of the psychological aspects of behavior in extreme situations. She begins with a look at recent war crimes for which the behavior of perpetrators and victims has been minutely documented in the media. Some acts of unspeakable cruelty stand out and raise questions about moral behavior in political states of emergency. That people under duress are capable of acts they would never commit in ordinary circumstances is a well documented fact. Seline Baumgartner uses excerpts from psychological and literary texts to investigate this phenomenon. Her main concern is the relationship between individual autonomy and outside influence. The artist already focused on the role of war veterans in an earlier work: in “Back Home”, which was included in the Zurich grant exhibition at Helmhaus, she pointed out how easily the thin line between perpetrator and victim tends to blur. The interviews with veterans in the soundtrack show that the soldiers knew they had violated their own moral standards in behaving as they did. 

Exhibition text: Manuela Schlumpf

Paper airplane 3m x 4.5m x 1.5m
Audio: CD player, active speakers
Audio: 7-minute loop

Excerpts from interviews with American Iraq veterans. 


"In Iraq we captured the airport in Baghdad. That was our main mission we just drove through those motherfuckers. We didn't take any prisoners. We just left the dead bodies to be counted by the others."

"When you're in war you switch off your feelings. The problem is then switching them back on again."

Discharged from the army -they did not give us housing support. No job and no home - I had to leave my family with relatives. I moved to NY where I could crash at some friends places, or in the car sometimes I even slept out on the street." 

There would be little kids laying down on the floor."

 We are going to do this and we're going to come back as heroes. We are Going to come back and everybody is going to look up to us. We are in the history books now." 

"I have an anger problem. I still got that war mentality. You got that anger in you being around all that death."

"One day I was working at home when my daughter wanted to surprise me and sneaked up behind me. In a split of a second I caught her neck and pushed it against the wall. When I saw the fear in here eyes and I realized what I'd done, I was so embarrassed that I left our home and did not return for a week. "

Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk, PL
3 channel video installation, audio, sculpture: cardboard, wood

Performance: 4 actors speak texts by Le Corbusier, mixed with fragments from interviews with tenants of prefabricated housing projects (the so-called Plattenbauten) in Poland.

120 C-prints, size A4
 

VON EINEM DACH ZUM ANDEREN WÜRDE EIN ADLER NUR WENIGE FLÜGELSCHLÄGE GEBRAUCHT HABEN

(FROM ONE ROOF TO THE NEXT AN EAGLE WOULD HAVE NEEDED JUST A FEW FLAPS OF WING )

Video/audio installation:2 synchronous video projections, 1 slide projection, 2 audio sources


The installation „from one roof to the next the eagle would have needed just a few flaps of wing“ tells a tale full of melancholy and yearning about the insuperable distance between human beings, about solitude, isolation, madness and nonsense.

TV monitor, video 12-minute loop, pencil on paper 100cm x100cm, studio table

A circle with a circumference of 100cm is circled with a compass 1000 times for a total distance of 1 kilometer.

During this time the shadow of the window frame slowly wanders across the studio table.

5 plans, 150cm x 100cm colored pencils on paper, stamp print

Horizontal: time in %
Vertical: age, life years

Dividing Life’s Time

„Lebensübersicht“(Life Survey) is a life-long project as it examines life itself and is also to be continued over a whole life time. Every five years, Seline Baumgartner records her past and project her future. The schematic drawings show, in percentages, how much times she used up annually for sleeping, training, art, work, leisure and relationships, whereby the red line of the present, the borderline between lived reality and imagined future, extends further and further downwards in the course of the years until, at 80 years of age, the life plan will have completely caught up with reality. Surveying also means ordering. Schemata are scientific means of analyzing and planning and they present facts in a graphic and usually simplified way. Just as communities encapsulate their future growth, possible developments and focal points in five-years plans, Baumgartner uses these representational forms for her life. Along the x-axis, time is marked in percentages; along the y-axis, the years run down from 0-80. The colours blue for sleep and yellow for leisure share the first six years between them and only than open like a curtain to make room for other activities. Where the coloured horizontal colour hatchings cross, denser vertical lines emerge, covering the plans with a rhythmical, wave-like structure. This gives rise to a painterly effect in contrast with the sobriety of the plan as a scientific instrument. In “ Lebensübersicht” Baumgartner observes herself as a young artist at the beginning of the 21st century. At the age of 25 she can no longer decide on one future and so makes two plans which branch into a life with children at the age of 35. The dilemma is symptomatic for our time, when the range of choices can be overwhelming. 

Text: Eveline Suter
"Average" Exhibition Katalog, Kusthaus Langenthal, 2008