“Saulus Taunus” is a dense video installation about men destroying the world. Three narrators’ voices address the viewer. The objects, cities, beings, and documentary scenes in the film are observations I make. The intuitive editing is an attempt to be political in a poetic way. I prefer to communicate by entertaining the viewer’s subconscious through the power of images, strange documentaries scenes and juxtaposed sound spheres.
Saulus Taunus, 2018
Two-screen video installation, mapped video projection
09:27 min, 4k, stereo audio
Dimensions variable
Courtesy: Patrick Alan Banfield
Thanks to Sascha Blank, Nicolas C. Geissler
These people are not sinners! shouts a young black woman.
In 2017, I began to explore the theme of masculinity, which I directly associate with power. Since then, I have produced a series of video works that deal with men and being a man from my perspective. Saulus Taunus is a dense installation that explores the idea of male humanity destroying the world. There are three different narrators in the film. I imagine these voices to be either divine or male. They try to communicate with each other but fail. The understanding of their intentions makes the work poetic. Some passages, like the young woman’s, are very serious, while others are clearly ironic.
In the film there are images of landscapes, forests, animated plants, which come together with unanimous objects such as concrete, roads, computers, plastic and cargo ships. But that’s not all – some shots show a couple trying to find the perfect position for a selfie, or a homeless man throwing out his rubbish on the street. The process of juxtaposing images and documentary scenes works purely intuitively for me. It is an attempt to be political in a poetic way. I am most moved by dichotomies with subtle differences; they are different, but not in the way you might think at first. One of the things I have in my head when I cut is environmental aspects. These thoughts cannot leave my head unchanged, because that would be too easy: ‘Stop treating the world like shit’, ‘Go vegan’, ‘Stop watching stupid TV shows’. I prefer to entertain the viewer’s subconscious through the power of images and specific scenes and juxtaposed spheres of sound.
I have a huge archive of images that I use like archive material. They are images of journeys I have made and projects I have done. Thanks to this personal archive I can remix them in different works. Some of the images from the forest in this work were also used in a work called vyLö:t, which was shown at the 8th Berlin Biennale. Other scenes from Saulus Taunus, documenting the day Trump was elected, were used in an earlier VR work: In that work, they represent disturbing but historical and political moments. In this film, they are used as placeholders to show fear-driven rhetoric that is emotionally charged. It is interesting to see how the archive grows and more and more connections are made. Political ideas are brought together aesthetically with poetic expression. My attitude is to provoke, either through my research on masculinity or by firing off juxtaposed images.
Text by Patrick Alan Banfield
MEWO KUNSTHALLE Memmingen, Germany “Forest. Enter. Exit”, 24.11.2018 — 03.03.2019 https://www.mewo-kunsthalle.de/ausstellungen/forest_enter_exit.html Installation view of “Saulus Taunus” Saulus Taunus, 2018 Two-channel video installation Courtesy Patrick Alan Banfield Artists: Patrick Alan Banfield, Daniel