In Import / Export Wolfgang Bittner organizes an encounter of a repeated process of image editing with a video loop of two trains that are filmed from an upside angle. The effect? A declining shot of a movement in opposing directions that is accompanied by a soundtrack of steadily more silent and deformed noises. In a time frame of 5 seconds the original recording transforms and step-by-step the image-sound-sequence dissolves.
The basis of the piece is a technically complex process that was executed repeatedly on digital data. Bittner positions the applied technical means in quirky contrast to the theme of the video piece. It seems as if the artist tries to trap a process by using the most modern technology, but that finally withdraws itself from any tangibility. With a digital programme as a 21st century pendant of the big wheelwork, the ghost in the machine, from the Industrial Revolution, the possibility is suggested at here that the mechanics of vanishing could be captured.
The interplay of image and sound develops a surprisingly dynamic loop of action that shows in a kind of time lapse how perception constantly vanishes, how it became more vague, dissolves in outlines and unspecific arrays of color and sound until, at the end, sediments are the only remaining left-overs. As a remembrance, or a process, or a passion. Furthermore, the fading of the video could also be understood as the wear marks of repetitive actions that become automatisms, actions that somehow loose their importance when the splendor of the new is gone. As in the daily routine, the familiar unchanging path, the same bridge, the same train.
(Lene ter Haar)