Say Hello to Peace and Tranquility
(Hasselt / Martelarenlaan 17)
Say Hello to Peace and Tranquility by the artists Dagmar Keller (1972 / Germany ) and Martin Wittwer (1969 / Switzerland) gives the viewer a tour of a completely deserted, stylized green suburb. In a long cinematic shot, the camera moves through the deserted streets, past perfectly manicured gardens and uniform architecture. The images look deceitfully authentic and so they mercilessly expose the pretence of this surrogate reality. This is a plastic world in which the dream of a created environment has been carried through to its extreme. The shattering feeling of emptiness is increased by the absence of even a single movement and the lack of all traces of humanity. Every feeling of what is reality and what is imaginary, what is to scale and what is staged, is gone.
As far as the creating of an image of the urban landscape goes, Say Hello to Peace and Tranquility is akin to Michael Najjar’s Netropolis in Maastricht. But whereas Najjar mixes the metropolises and creates a new image, Keller and Wittwer give the calm suburbs of a random city an eerie feeling.