IMAGINARY PARADISE
2021

4.8 Inch monitor 1366×768 Pixel,
aluminium distance frame with passepartout,
Mirogard museum glass with anti-reflective coating
50×40×2.8 cm

1080x1920 Pixel, H264 Codec
54:41 Min. in loop

Edition of 3 + 1AP

In 2015, leading politicians from 193 member states adopted 17 common sustainability goals (Goals) within the framework of the United Nations, which are to be fulfilled by 2030. The aim of the Agenda 2030 is to combat extreme poverty, to improve the living conditions of all people in the long term and to protect our planet Earth. The Sustainable Development Goals combine three levels of sustainability that are inextricably linked and influence each other - social, environmental and economic. 


Matthias Gubler takes the sustainability goals outlined above and visualizes them by assigning each member 17 stock footage clips, each lasting one second, resulting in 3,281 video clips. The total duration of the film is approximately 60 minutes. The video clips are intermixed in random mode and cut one after another with hard cuts. The video clip is presented on a very small monitor with a passe-partout and a large white frame. With the work IMAGINARY PARADISE, conceived especially for the exhibition, the artist wants to point out that we have always lived in a dreamlike, artificial world - more precisely: our idea of the world has always been shaped by media images, such as those from stock footage databases. These image worlds predominantly show us impressions of joy, happiness, health, beauty, equality, wealth, eternal youth and many more topics. In stylized and exaggerated form, these imagery worlds thus suggest precisely many aspects that the 17 Sustainable Development Goals seek to achieve.

The formal language of the work shows itself in familiar rapid cuts of the video material, which is why it is not possible for us to grasp all of the images, or even to reflect on them or relate them to each other. This moment of perceptual irritation, or not being able to perceive a pictorial conglomerate in its entirety, is intensified by the way the work is presented: the small monitor and the picture frame, which is kept large in relation to it and is provided with a glass, constantly make it impossible to recognize the moving images unambiguously and thereby illustrate our always already "framed" mode of perception. In analogy to the supposedly documentary contemporary witnesses, Gubler succeeds in presenting the viewer with an already "framed" snapshot of the neoliberalist West.

It is precisely this way of looking at things, which cannot be unambiguously defined in our perception, that gives the video collages further levels of meaning and their complexity. Don't we all know this feeling? One would like to move forward, and yet one always seems to step in the same place, somehow it just doesn't go forward. Past, present and future blend into a seemingly indistinguishable whole. If we have set ourselves a goal, want to get there by all possible means, and seem to continually fail, to stand still, then the moment seems to have come when we rest in ourselves, concentrate on the essentials and reflect on ourselves. This is precisely what Gubler's moving images make perceptible, and questions such as "Can't we cede some of our wealth to others? Is the resolution just an illusion to distract us from our bad conscience? Are we really doing well or shouldn't new goals be formulated just for us?", were raised.

We are all part of this world, we all should think self-reflexively and individually about a sustainable life, and even if nothing seems to move, nothing seems to develop towards a better world - the images move inexorably.

Text: Nadja Borer