Centrum Hotel 2015

Video, 4:58 Min., Loop

Excerpt from the opening speech by Clemens Ottnad M.A., art historian.
Managing Director of the Künstlerbund Baden-Württemberg, January 8, 2016.

… And unexpectedly, in the video work Centrum Hotel by Barbara Karsch-Chaïeb, we also encounter a David Lynch – who is actually invisible to us. He had previously lived several times in the gigantic demolition building depicted in the film, and the concrete skeleton of the complex, which has been smashed to pieces in the meantime (with damaged masonry and wall fragments that open up like wounds), no longer hints at the splendor of the former festival era. Our eyes wander unhindered into the ruined rooms, into the abandoned architecture that has given up its function as a private dwelling and shelter; they penetrate behind the formerly intact to highly glossy facades, under the skin of wallpaper that peels layer by layer, hanging down in shreds, the ray-shaped shards of glass of broken window panes resembling a blocked camera shutter that has extended the exposure time to infinity, thus completely erasing the inhabitants and any movable property from the visible surface.
The contrast between the dilapidated brittleness of technical surfaces and the poetic love song lyrics of Blue Velvet (“She wore blue velvet / Bluer than velvet were her eyes / Warmer than may her tender sighs / …”) superimposed at the bottom of the video Hotel Centrum could hardly be greater (“She wore blue velvet / Bluer than velvet were her eyes / Warmer than may her tender sighs / …”)! But if the reader of these lines ever fell into romantic sentiment, he would – like Barbara Karsch-Chaïeb herself during her shooting on location – abruptly be transported back to the current reality, when in our back, unnoticed, a local music band loudly sang the anthem for the national holiday.
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