But who still dares to claim anything is typically male or female? Nevertheless it seems as if the Mediamatic Screens clearly bear the hand of their makers. The feminine and adventurous atmosphere of Mai Ueda and Vanessa Beecroft's screens is quite visible. With Ueda it is a kind of simple experience, like a journey through a universe of shared joy and sorrow. With Beecroft, it comes in the form of almost separate performances of men and women. The fragile models in the Guggenheim museum stress Beecroft's classic femininity, while the marines on the deck of an aircraft carrier mostly stress a macho male element. And also Claudie de Cleen shows how we all are still attached to sex-based clichés.
But not only the female artists force us into thinking of sexual stereotypes with their films. Jasper van ten Brink attached the camera to a cement mixer and recorded a trip through the IJ-tunnel. A truly overwhelming visual experience, something like a boy's dream come true. And how much boy's dream is there in Yariv Alter Fin's the Kiss? Or in Mieke Gerritzens?
Then still remain the screens that were created in the apparent harmony of artistic partnership. Do the flickering lamps and disco ball of of the duo Jodi -Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans- tell us something about their collaboration? Or is their beautiful, discarded technology only humorous and should we look no further into their Morse-code? We also have the contribution of Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries – Young-hae Chang and Marc Voge – which is rather explicit. Their road movie in an Amsterdam rental car is about the initially shocking but also funny and surprising relations that can exist between man and woman.
A kind of relation that this DVD is apparently all about.
Translation Nadya Peek
