Eternal Summer

Eternal Summer, 2000: Installation
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Eternal Summer, 2000: Screen Shot
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Eternal Summer, 2000: Screen Shot
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Eternal Summer, 2000: Installation Close Up
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"Eternal Summer" is a site-specific, 4 screen installation commissioned for the waiting room of the Ebner, Stolz & Partners corporate office at the Kronencarre building in Stuttgart, Germany.

The concept of the installation in the waiting room is to provide customers changing visual scenes that would stimulate thoughts of summer memories and chance encounters. Each of the four screens cycle through 11 different nature sequences videotaped during the summer of 2000 in the southern French countryside. They are handled technically not unlike "samples" found in techno and other pop music to create a sense of rhythmic and repetitive action. They replay at varying rates, and show their artifice through back and forth cycling.

In conjunction with the moving images, short texts appear superimposed on the images at random moments. These texts come from personals (kontakte) and stocks news collected from American and European cultural regions such San Francisco, Los Angeles, Stuttgart, Berlin, and the internet. The function of these texts is to provide unexpected references to social encounters and business situations in the manner of "fortune cookies"; to stimulate alternative forms of reflection about everyday situations. There is in addition, the reflection on the nature of chance encounter language: how we describe ourselves and our desires and how we communicate with each other. In addition to the preselected material, there is the expectation that members of the office will contribute their own texts which will join the body of messages randomly cycling through during the day.

(George Legrady)