Janet Cardiff

For Walk Münster Janet Cardiff invited visitors to take a walk along a specified route in the vicinity of the Westfälisches Landesmuseum. Combining the visual experiences of the walk with an audio commentary and sounds on tape, the artist compounded various realms of perception to create a new level of experience. The audio guide was played on a walkman. On the tape site-specific sounds blended with synthetically generated sounds and voices to create a new composition. As listeners were moving through the urban setting they also experienced a fictional world: the recorded sounds suggested the presence of things and phenomena that were not actually there. The voice spoke of incidents, of a crime, for instance, in which, as it unfurled, the listeners themselves appeared to be involved.

Video sequences related to the audio guide were installed in the historic section of the museum. Here, the sense of being a participant in a fictional event condensed into an impression of being an actual eyewitness. Through the eyepiece of a telescope trained on the square in front of the museum it was possible to observe scenes that seemed to be happening live – except that they were mere simulations, pre-produced film sequences. The possibilities of manipulation in a highly technologically controlled world and the manipulability of people found visual form in Cardiff’s superimposition of events and synchronised real and fictional images. The viewers’ corporeal perception was manipulated in such a way that their real environment and virtual scenarios were fused to the point of being almost indistinguishable.

Beate Pittnauer