The Controlled Voyeur:
a live media happening and videoessay
17/05/1999
Spring Exhibition,
Kunsthal Charlottenborg,
Copenhagen,Denmark
Kunsthal Charlottenborg invited the artistgroup Antonina Szram and Jerena Cecilie Steenbryggen, featuring Jens Albinus and Thomas Levin amongst others, to explore the notion of the self.
The live happening supported by Zentropa Film involved an installation of 4 50” screens 4 cameramen 10 danish actors and an OB van.
It exploring 4 stories by 10 actors performed in front of, and filmed live an exhibition audience, projecting an edited video for the 4 screens unfolding live
The videoessay ‘The controlled voyeur’ is the result of this happening.
A month before the Big Brother phenomenon came to our screens, this installation dealt with the exposer and the voyeur of ‘the Self’ by creating an environment of reality TV and the "somebody" before the time of social media.
This is a reality as it is presented, a reality as a proposed fiction, an unsentimental scanning of the human behavior pattern created in the borderline between installation and video expression.
The present being didn’t know what was going to happen, didn’t know how to show self control when it was happening and when he was exposed to his own gaze he became a picture in the space.