Kontinuum I

Video (DVD), 09:00 min. Language : French / Swiss German, Subtitle : French / German

In collaboration with Mauricio Gajardo

Exposition Nacional EXPO 02 Murten

Four people coming from the Swiss midlands (French and German speakers) talk about their relationship with a personal belonging.

Realized for : « Heimat Fabrik », Expo.02, Murten 2002
Direction : Ingrid Wildi Merino, Mauricio Gajardo
Cast : Lea Achermann, Sarah Glaisen, Francisco Osorio, Adolf Urweider
Camera, Sound : Ingrid Wildi Merino
Light : Mauricio Gajardo
Editing : Mauricio Gajardo, Ingrid Wildi Merino
Translation : Erika Lynn Scheidegger, Gaston Scheidegger, Elisabeth Brungger, Mai-Thu Perret


Presented as a part of the pavilion entitled Heimatfabrik during the Swiss national exhibition Expo 02, this video track considers the relation to a cultural belonging. Ingrid Wildi interviewed twenty individuals living the Alemanic and francophone Mittelland. Through a questionnaire she asked every participant to choose an object and to evoke why they are attached to them. A video camera recorded the interviews from a remote position, thereby only filming the upper body.

The singularity of each individual transpires through their body movements, expressions and through their distinctive pasts. The age diversity, the different cultural backgrounds, together with the unique personality of each of them underscore the atomisation of contemporary societies. The adoption of this artistic procedure signal an opposition to nationalistic ideologies that tend to standardise identities. The different speeches of the two interrogated men and women are fragmented into alternating sequences by the means of a dialectical edit arranged by Ingrid Wildi and Mauricio Gajardo.




As the title proclaims, the end result forms a continuous flow woven together by an autonomous rhythm. After having identified and named their object, the individuals describe their physical aspect; material characteristics; their organic nature, let it be hand-crafted or industrially produced; along with their functions. The object is no longer simply material and form, but contains different temporal stratums; the initial manipulations suggested by the fabrication procedure evoke different utilisations. The clues of these contacts evoke stories, childhood memories or reactions resulting from the presence of the object. All that man creates is contaminated by the stories of the bodies that have touched them and mirrors, like vanity, their ephemeral condition. It crystallises the passing of time, the progressive erosion of the material, its threat of it disappearing and its need to be transmitted. Animated by the different gestures and speeches that they activate, with the interface inscribed in a network of all kinds of exchanges, the object makes us consider the interaction between a single object and the entity that it belongs to. Though composed of imperceptible atomic structures, the object appears to us as an undividable mass. This visual experience is called into question by the thought that unveils the complexity of representing a concrete reality. Like a reproduction offering a distance, this picture reflects the relationship to otherness, the limits that circumscribe the body of an individual and the need of a contact point as a means to negotiate its relationship to the world.

Geneviève Loup
(translated by Zsuzsanna Szabo)


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