Bjørn Melhus
2001
Weeping (still)
DVD / 7 min. loop video installaton, w/2 screens, variable dim.
In video art Bjørn Melhus has developed a singular position, expanding the possibilities for the critical reception of cinema and television. His stories have narrative structures formed by the fragmentation of the levels of image and sound. His practice of fragmentation, destruction, and reconstitution of well-known figures, topics, and strategies of the mass media opens up not only a network of new interpretations and critical commentaries, but also defines the relationship of mass media and viewer anew. The space of art and the exhibition context is of particular importance here, the viewer’s demontage of the television and movie programs – this goes in a limited sense as well for the installations – can no longer take place. His collages of rhythmic language and sound include almost incidentally the techniques of the video clip and trailer culture, although Melhus quotes neither pop music, nor does he engage in any lifestyle propaganda. His works expose the mechanisms of commercialization and rebel against simplification and global cultural standardization. His European view of American culture and of the global and trivial branches of mass culture is determined both by fascination as well as by a deep skepticism, by the longing to get away and by homesickness.