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Rob Schröder's video sequences on today's visual culture In three large projections, videographer, tv-producer and designer Rob Schröder has summarized his vision on the 'tsunami' of images that engulfs us via all media on a daily basis. The culture of seduction
Pornography and terrorism have one thing in common — apart from the fact that the Islamic part of the later promises the benefits of the first for those who die as martyrs: they try to seduce us into wanting to be like them. Whether appealing to fear or lust, both strategies use gros and utterly banal means to a matching end. They tend to wipe out any difference, any subtlety, any thought of a world beyond. Sex and bigotry: to sides of the same coin.
The culture of information
Information is the matter of our age. It is produced and distributed for our benefit — we could not exist as cultural beings without it. 'Objective figures' and statistics rule our perspective on the world, but we need never forget that data is not synonymous with meaning. And that as much as we consume and interpret information, it is also projected onto us. We are being described and classified as we are being observed by invisible eyes which turn us into information ourselves. We not only read statistics we have become statistics.
The culture of engagement
Inserting your own images into the public realm is taking an active part in today's urban information exchange. A compensation for the messages of brands, corporations, governments and insttutions that clutter public space. Adding to the clutter may seem a counter-productive strategy. But it is also a form of resistance, and a sign of engagement with the public realm as 'marketplace of ideas and commentary'.
[collages by Rob Schröder] |
