Video Guards for Bremen
Museum guards, who usually keep an eye on artworks and watch the visitors, become the subject of an artwork themselves here.
On monitors placed on black pedestals throughout the room, the upper bodies of museum guards appear. They seem to be directly targeting and addressing the real visitors. They greet and admonish them (“Please don’t touch anything!”, “You've dropped something there!” …), but they also get bored, clear their throats, or blow their noses. The question is, who is observing whom here?
The video installation is adapted to each exhibition location so that the security staff on duty there and the respective museum director (or an art historian) appear on the monitors. In this case, the former director of the Kunsthalle Bremen, Wulf Herzogenrath, along with four individuals who have actually worked as security guards at the Kunsthalle, appear on the monitors, taking turns.
There are now five versions of “Video Guards,” created for the following institutions:
Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) in Stuttgart, 1993 (with Prof. Dr. Siegfried Zielinski)
Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum Hagen, 1994 (with Prof. Dr. Michael Fehr)
Kunstmuseum Bern, 2002 (with Prof. Dr. Peter Schneemann)
Rheinisches LandesMuseum Bonn, 2004 (with Prof. Dr. Frank Günter Zehnder)
Kunsthalle Bremen, 2005 (with Prof. Dr. Wulf Herzogenrath)
Actors: Mileva Bjelobrk, Gerhard Dittmer, Wulf Herzogenrath, Rita Piel, Burkhard Ramdohr