Offspring Taking Off

Offspring Taking off (2009) is a responsive video installation. In it we are met by color coded backdrops. Each scene has a child holding an oversized balloon.  The children pose under clear direction with specific roles. One in a the field of ​​sunflowers wearing a yellow raincoat with a yellow balloon. The next is in a glowing fall landscape, dressed in red: pants and derby hat holding a red balloon. The third child has a white balloon and wears a fencing suit, surrounded by a white-gray fog. The fourth child is in green on grass with a ball and a likewise green balloon.  These moving images are so motionless that for the viewer it is easy to believe that nothing else than portraiture will happen. The videos are like still images behind glass and frame. They are shown on small screens built into walnut wood boxes with large buttons. The spectator is invited to push them, and by doing so they disturb the children's fictitious world, and the border between us and them. By pushing the button the balloon takes off taking the child with it. Without this act, reality isn’t altered and the child is trapped in his/her stillness.  This work deals with the concept of change: how hard it to do, and/or to evoke it.  The impossible can become possible in an instance, without warning. The viewers’ intervention creates another situation, and a completely new image. The children fly off to independence.