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Alien (Ten Songs from Beyond), 2002

10-Channel Video Installation

Alien is a series of ten short films, each of which is a strange hybrid of amateur Karaoke, tourist home video, science fiction and subtitled documentary. On entering the installation, the viewer finds herself in a dark void: from the shadowy center of the empty space, ten distinct voices can be heard singing a range of German songs.

The voices emerge from ten monitors which are distributed around the perimeters of the installation space, each on a pedestal that is placed at a distance of about a meter from the wall that if faces. With only their backs visible from the center of the room, the faces of the monitors illuminate the walls before them with glowing reflections that shimmer and shift in hue as the footage on each of the monitors runs its course. Heard simultaneously as they leak into the room from the ten monitors, the ten voices produce a Babylonian dissonance at the core of the space.

Candice Breitz, Alien (Ten Songs from Beyond), 2002, 10-Channel Video Installation, videostill
Candice Breitz, Alien (Ten Songs from Beyond), 2002, 10-Channel Video Installation, videostill
Candice Breitz, Alien (Ten Songs from Beyond), 2002, 10-Channel Video Installation, videostill
Candice Breitz, Alien (Ten Songs from Beyond), 2002, 10-Channel Video Installation, videostill
Candice Breitz, Alien (Ten Songs from Beyond), 2002, 10-Channel Video Installation, videostill
Candice Breitz, Alien (Ten Songs from Beyond), 2002, 10-Channel Video Installation, videostill
Candice Breitz, Alien (Ten Songs from Beyond), 2002, 10-Channel Video Installation, videostill
Candice Breitz, Alien (Ten Songs from Beyond), 2002, 10-Channel Video Installation, videostill
Candice Breitz, Alien (Ten Songs from Beyond), 2002, 10-Channel Video Installation, videostill
Candice Breitz, Alien (Ten Songs from Beyond), 2002, 10-Channel Video Installation, videostill
Candice Breitz, Alien (Ten Songs from Beyond), 2002, 10-Channel Video Installation, videostill

DVD Installation: 10 Looping DVDs
Ed. of 5 + 2 AP

Candice Breitz

Candice Breitz, born in 1972 in Johannesburg, is best known for her moving image installations. Throughout her career, she has explored the dynamics by means of which an individual becomes him or herself in relation to a larger community, be that community the immediate community that one encounters in family, or the real and imagined communities that are shaped not only by questions of national belonging, race, gender and religion, but also by the increasingly undeniable influence of mainstream media such as television, cinema and popular culture. Most recently, Breitz’s work has focused on the conditions under which empathy is produced, reflecting on a media-saturated global culture in which strong identification with fictional characters and celebrity figures runs parallel to widespread indifference to the plight of those facing real world adversities. Candice Breitz is based in Berlin and, since 2007, holds a professorship for fine arts at the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK) and in the same year was awarded with the Prix International d´Art Contemporain I Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco. Her work has been featured in international group shows in institutions such as Haus der Kunst, München (2023), Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (2022), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2021), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (2021), the Jewish Museum, New York City (2020), the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2016), De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam (2001). Solo exhibitions of Breitz’s work have been shown at Fotografiska, Berlin (2023), Tate Liverpool (2022), Museum Folkwang, Essen (2022), Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2016), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2010), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2009) , Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2005) among others. Next to various group exhibitions Breitz has participated in biennales in Johannesburg (1997), São Paulo (1998), Istanbul (1999), Taipei (2000), Kwangju (2000), Tirana (2001), Venice (2005), New Orleans (2008), Göteborg (2003 + 2009), Singapore (2011) and Dakar (2014). She was invited to the South African Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017).



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