[2000] Video Home

Wood constructions, paint, four rear-projection videos, stage projectors, projection mirrors
Dimensions variable (approx. 360 x 420 x 225 cm and 600 x 350 x 225 cm)

Video Home is a two-part, multi-channel sculptural video installation that refers to the 1970's revival in design during the late 1990's with its (as is inherent with most retro movements) vague romantic longing for a (recent) past: in this case the 1970's, and connected with this period, the cliche of liberty and social progressive values. The videos of the installations are based on advertisements published in the popular German design and lifestyle magazine Schöner Wohnen from the 1970's. Digitally altered and animated, they are inserted as projections into a built environment creating an interface that is used to shift the various levels of the perception.

"[...] But in what sense are the images actually images at all? And does the escape trajectory they describe only move in one direction? The disappearance loses itself in the remoteness to which it refers. It runs in all directions, particularly penetrating the proximity, which the viewer believes he occupies. It enters the interior surrounding him, like the catalog living-room-landscapes the viewer is familiar with and accepts. But now it becomes more apparent than ever that the interior is void of domestic hominess. The sleek and pure interior exudes an aloofness that spurs on the motif of displacement the most when close to the viewer. The feeling of eviction pours over him and invalidates the differences between an interior in which he might linger, and an exterior to which he might turn. As much as Karina Nimmerfall's installations work with frames, enclosing and confining images, confining and releasing the gaze; they continually break them down as well. This strikes the alleged interior. Things that would be familiar in a living space disintegrate close up, becoming utterly strange—a situation, which at first seemed cozy, turns sinister in an instant. [...]" - Hans-Joachim Lenger