Staging Silence II

Visual artist Hans Op de Beeck based this film around abstract, archetypal settings that lingered in his memory as the common denominator of the many similar public places he experienced. The video images themselves are both ridiculous and serious, just like the eclectic mix of pictures in our minds. The decision to film in black and white heightens this ambiguity: the theatrical approach invokes the legacy of slapstick, as well as the insidious suspense and latent derailment of . The title refers to the staging of such dormant decors where the spectator can project himself as the lone protagonist. Our mental images are disproportionate mixtures of concrete information and fantasies, and in this film they materialize before the spectator's eyes through anonymous tinkering and improvising hands. Arms and hands appear and disappear at random, manipulating banal objects, scale models and artificial lighting into alienating yet recognizable locations. These places become animated decors for possible stories - evocative visual propositions to the spectator.