TANGENT_FEAR: Inviting Horror

Category

Exhibition

Year

2006

Institution

V2_Lab for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam

Comment

TANGENT_FEAR presents the artistic research project Inviting Horror by Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat in which the experience of fear in public space is investigated. In a world in which daily activity is monitored through electronic technologies marked by networked surveillance systems, biometric scanning and profiling mechanisms, people are required to surrender access to their personal spheres of privacy and movement. Under the guise of community safety and anti-terror security a demand for ultimate transparency is made. Suspense is created, in which a perpetual sense of fear of an invisible 'other' form a pre-emptive reaction to potential acts or events which may never occur. Increasingly urban space becomes a phobic zone, a horror-scape, in which an explosive mix of aggression and desire on something or against someone results in an irrational need to remove one's self from the public sphere, a desire for the incognito. Inviting Horror focusses on the body as 'placeholder' of perception and physical memory in our media influenced conscience. How long can the body sustain a heightened level of alertness? What does constant tension do to our physical system and how does this process influence our contact with other persons? Such vigilance - the constant expectation of horror - can cause traumatic senses of bodily awareness, paranoia and phobias. Fear is externalized, and placed into our perception of reality; haunting specters such as 'stalkers' and 'terrorists' emerge.