Boom Box
(Maastricht / Eiffelgebouw)
From an elevated and fixed vantage point the viewer looks down into the valley of a picturesque mountain landscape in Europe. The scene is very much like the stock idyllic scenes found in landscape paintings. In the distance a small red car is approaching that finds its way up along the narrow mountain road. The music that blasts from the sound installation is getting louder as the car draws nearer. The viewer is startled when the boom-boxing car sweeps by and makes the straight descent into the valley again. The romantic landscape has been briefly invaded by a trespasser from the ‘now’.
In this installation Barbara Visser (1966, the Netherlands) makes the viewer into an accomplice of her artwork. Timing of image and sound is perfect and creates a spatial experience. When witnessing the fictive image it becomes for that moment in time part of reality.
In Visser’s work reality and fiction are of a piece with each other. Playing with time, place and context, the artist points at the fine divide between registration and setting in scene.
Visser investigates and analyses the various strategies that have an effect on our modes of thought and collective memory. There is more to her work than meets the eye and she criticizes the fact that clichés and fixed opinions all too often define our thoughts and acts.