Banlieue du Vide
March 17 - April 16, 2005
Thomas Köner

Thomas Köner, Banlieue du Vide, single channel video , 2004 Detail

"To watch" is a balance between staring, which means that you concentrate your attention on an object right in front of you, and the mobility of a superficial view.
This balance is also created if you watch Thomas Köner’s video installation Banlieue du Vide (2004) which uses webcam pictures of snow-covered roads. "During last winter I collected (via the Internet) about 3000 pictures taken by surveillance cameras. The images I selected show empty roads at night, covered with snow. The soundtrack consists of grey noise and traffic sounds, created from memory. The only movement that is visible are the changes of snow covering the roads."1

Although the piece deals with surveillance and the internet, it doesn't refer to connotations like suppression or controlling. Banlieue du Vide is much more a series of pictures of snow-covered landscapes, which become the subject of a patient and unspectacular observation. We are invited to observe the time that passes. The artist decided to show us landscapes, snow-covered surfaces which are changing right in front of us. A feeling of transition and disappearance comes both from the slow movement of the pictures the artist has chosen and also from the sound composed by Köner. Together, they give the piece a timeless character. Banlieue du Vide refers to an existential quality of everything that is in the process of disappearing. We can't do anything about it but wait, not being involved: what we are looking at is steadily disappearing. Thomas Köner is praising the trace, the decay and also the time that is passing. A self-portrait.

— Nicole Gingras

1. Thomas Köner, description of the work on his website

Nicole Gingras, "Une affaire de regards," published in the exhibition catalogue
Regarder, observer, surveiller, (Chicoutimi, Canada: Séquence Galerie, 2004).

Thomas Köner, born in Germany in 1965, studied electronic music at the CEM-Studio in Arnhem. In 2000, the Montreal New Cinema New Media Festival awarded him the New Media Prize. In 2004, he was awarded the Golden Nica by the Prix Ars Electronica as well as the Produktionspreis WDR (a sound art award) during the Deutsche Klangkunst-Preis. His work Banlieue du Vide was given the NORMAN prize in 2004 for best film at the Filmwinter Stutgart, and nominated for the MuVi Award 2004 (best German music video) at the International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen.