SUEX is an installation consisting of four videos in relation to four different sound compositions. Basis is an aphorism by AIP in 16 sequences. The text is translated into Hebrew, Japanese and Noongar (language of Indigenous Australians, southwest corner of Western Australia).The text was recorded in each language, building the main sound. The four videos play simultaneously, “speak” to the viewer and try to get his/her attention in building a conversational atmosphere in confrontation to the viewer.
HDvideo/sound installation for a four-wall presentation SUEX – (Sustainability and Extinction)
in collaboration with GRAHAM BRADDY, AVI HARPAZ, TIM McCABE (Australia) and SORA TAKAYAMA (Japan)
Blu-ray DISC distributed and available through BLOOMSBURY VIDEO LIBRARY, is home to a rich, growing range of streaming collections for students, teachers and researchers across the arts, humanities and social sciences.
SUEX (Sustainability and Extinction) talks about Western Society: living a luxurious life at the expense of others, addressing consequences of exploitation people have to suffer from. SUEX mainly concentrates on exploitation concerning cheap human labour and the human being behind it. Which resources are used to enrich Western Society and lifestyle? SUEX looks at the word sustainability in its meaning of protecting and keeping things how they are; but also in addressing its opposite “extinction” and the necessity of destroying to create something new. It looks at consequences sustainability can cause, which can lead to extinction.
The global discussion about sustainability in context to the environment and raising concern and awareness of related issues as well as the recognition of an increasing growth of a global, unifying culture that loses its basic origins, make this work for the viewer an immersive platform to distinguish a change of thinking, a shifting of accommodated world conception.
In SUEX the viewer is suddenly confronted with i.e. language barriers (in the sound composition) and an “unwanted” identification mixed with thoughtless consuming pattern. The viewer experiences the loss of his/her familiar surrounding being adopted to function as the centre of the world. Outside his/her comfort zone, a first recognition of: There is something else than me – can take place, which then can lead to active change of thinking and behaviour. From collecting to conserving, mass consumption (in any form) to viewing and observing details to get aware of origins… Irritation and a flood on information are now set against concise studies i.e. of a slow moving starfish or a road train in slow motion.
SUEX forces the viewer to observe slow movements again rather than quickly consume and inhale mass information.