Eva Koch’s video installation Confer consists of two projections set opposite each other. On one projection we see a contrabass, which is filmed so close up that the instrument seems to be physically present. On the other projection we follow a helicopter against the background of a lightly clouded sky. There is no immediate encounter between the two pictures, a contrabass and a helicopter.
The viewer stands in the interval between them and forms, so to speak, the third place, the place of meeting. The meeting is to a large degree gestalted by the sound: the rising and falling drone of the helicopter, the alternating sequences of the music, now tentative and soft, now almost insistent, so that it seems to be addressing itself to the helicopter. The viewer will probably experience the music as an illustration for the picture of the helicopter, because that is where the story is. But just as we have the sense that it is the contrabass that directs the helicopter, so we feel that the circling of the helicopter is playing the contrabass, thus creating an interweave of picture and sound. Neither music nor picture make an unambiguous statement, as they alternately calm and animate us, and bring the viewer into his own pulsating space of pleasure, irritation, wonder and anxiety between Eva Koch’s two projections.
“Confer” means to converse, to consult or to grant. In this installation it is the viewer who is given information through the eye and ear. In the openness of the intermediary space we ourselves are the wondering creators.
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Auguste Rodin’s sculptural group The Burghers of Calais in front of Calais