MARTIN HEUSER

SELECTED WORKS

h t t p : / / m a r t i n h e u s e r. c o m
DON'T LOOK NOW!

[2008] Video installation, 4,5 min

Don't Look Now is a video installation that aims to create the opposite
of an amusement park: by looking into a hole (a 'gory hole'), the viewer
can see him/herself taking part in horrible scenes, from executions in
the old times to Abu Ghraib, Vietnam, scenes from violent blockbuster
movies, etc.

This work results from my refection on how news and fction are
perceived. Is there any difference between watching real war or a
violent flm? Is not watching horrible things a form of voyeurism? Don't
Look Now offers a sort of sadomasochistic-voyeuristic experience.

h t t p : / / m a r t i n h e u s e r. c o m / d o n t - l o o k - n o w /
EVERYBODY'S HAPPY NOWADAYS

[2008] Video, 35 min

In the video performance "Everybody's Happy Nowadays", a sentence

taken from Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ is endlessly repeated by
performer Javier Marisco, along with specifc ordered actions like
drinking rum and smiling to the camera, all in accordance with the
infexible pace of a predetermined time signal, every 15 seconds.
Though planned to last one hour, the performance had to be
interrupted at 35 minutes.

h t t p : / / m a r t i n h e u s e r. c o m /e v e r y b o d y s - h a p p y -
n o w a d ay s /
TWO-MINUTE PORN

[2009] Video, 2 min, silent

Two-Minute Porn is a video made entirely with stills from gay porn
movies. One per frame. Just like subliminal messages are too fast to be
perceived, in this video the images merge into a fesh-colored mess.

h t t p : / / m a r t i n h e u s e r. c o m / t w o - m i n u t e - p o r n /
GOLDEN SHOWER

[2009] Video, 11 min, silent

On the Saturday night of 24 January, 2009, from 9pm to 6am, a night-

vision camera was installed at one of the entrances of Valand School of
Fine Arts facing a side street, a very popular spot among the main
avenue club goers for street urination. The video focuses on this act,
with the participation of ten unaware males.

Thanks: Malina Cailean & Steven Ladouceur

h t t p : / / m a r t i n h e u s e r. c o m / g o l d e n - s h o w e r /
TEATERGATAN
with Véronique Malo

[2009] Digital prints, 10x14cm

On a Monday night in December 2008, Véronique Malo and Martin

Heuser witnessed a disturbing event at Teatergatan (Theatre Street),
outside Valand School of Fine Arts, where both were studying. A girl
screamed and screamed and they thought those could be sounds from
a rape. Once outside those sounds of screams were pretty much like
drunk laughter and joking after a party. Hours after the event they came
to realize that the girl might have been drugged.

In a conversation one month later, Martin and Veronique got to know

that they had experienced the same scene.

Their parallel stories are succinctly told in double sided postcards.

h t t p : / / m a r t i n h e u s e r. c o m / t e at e r g at a n /
INTERVIEW
[2009] Video installation, 5 channels

Martin Heuser’s Interview is a video installation rooted in the artist’s

fascination with subtle forms of interrogation. This work is as dark as it
is playful, with Heuser continually rediscovering a more subtle balance
between the two with each question that he asks. The artist sits
hidden off-camera and provokes his subjects with questions such as
“Do you know how to cook?” Heuser’s techniques are derived from
both CIA interrogation manuals and members of his extended family.
A larger sphere of infuences would include the writers Aldous Huxley
and George Orwell, as well as artist Miriam Bäckström. In Huxleyian
terms, the artist speaks of “inficting pleasure” through such gestures
as offering subjects sweets and then ridiculing their table manners. If
such tactics are rooted in the subtleties of language, these
interrogations become their most powerful when Heuser’s fgures of
speech dissolve into purely numerical abstractions, such as “Rate
yourself as a person, on a scale from 1 to 5.” Here, the interrogations
begin to reverberate against their context within a media art exhibition,
a context in which the abstractions of numbers and multiplicity cast
light upon our increasingly abstract everyday world.

— David Crawford
h t t p : / / m a r t i n h e u s e r. c o m / i n t e r v i e w /
© MARTIN HEUSER, 2010