I begin at the deepest point, assuming that what lies deepest in a thing other than myself is what is furthest from me.
(1) Caspar D. Friedrich's studio, as painted by Friedrich in 1822. The original painting has his wife standing by the window, perhaps watching the passing ships. His wife is gone now and an Italian flag flaps beyond the window, indicating that what was once navigable waters has since become a solid edifice of bureaucracy at which, presumably, no one looks.
Change of scene: two young gypsies confront an elderly, relatively wealthy tourist on the streets of Rome. The girl distracts while the boy picks the parsimonious geezer's coat pocket. A scene equaling the empty studio in its want of human warmth. But wait, the scene isn't complete yet. As the girl turns to run she spots a dark-haired man with videocam recording her crime. In her expression one can determine that fine line between "hate" and "malignancy." She doesn't know the camera man, she can't hate him, though she wishes him dead.
(2) We now step back a bit to the three monitors lining the middle layer, which focus our attention on what's happening on the floor a few meters from the window. The outer two monitors act as landing fields to a whimsical, leaping rat trap designed for large rodents, twenty-five to forty kilos. The trap, however, is not baited; or, if it is, it's an elusive, piquant cheese pressed from emotional curds.
On the inner monitor, the noseless features of a juvenile erode as the rock they're carved on crumbles into sand; no ordinary sand, but one gravity thirsts for like water, sucking it through the floor boards. When the trap flies through this scene, en route from one outer monitor to the other, the bust becomes suddenly whole again, and the deterioration process resumes. (Note to the above: the rock upon which this animation is mapped is actually a fossilized neolithic skull.)
(3) Much further from the window and again on the floor, a small rug, hinting at Anatolian influences, is neatly spread and lit by an intimate pre-incandescent source. This setting is prepared for the great-grandfather of all conjuring tricks: the game of "cups and balls," or, as the ancient Romans refered to it, "acetabularius," i.e. "he who deals with vinegar cups." This game still thrives and is common trade on the "Ku'damm" of Berlin. It is a game one invariably loses, unless the dealer is incompetent; it is a vice that has swallowed the working man's wages for millenniums of Friday evenings. It is this image that constitutes the surface of the installation, the monitor closest to the audience.
Incidentally, in this particular "cups and balls" game the dealer is invisible, as is the bait of the trap in the mid-section, and as is Friedrich's wife at, what I assume to be, the "heart" of this piece.
