LOOP '06 - The international video art fair
May 19 - 21, 2006

Presented artist: Corinna Schnitt
Sreened film: ONCE UPON A TIME, 2005, 25 min

A slowly perpetuating camera revolves around its own electric-powered axis in the middle of a pedantically tidy middle-class living room. Nothing seems to disturb the sunny peacefulness of this ambience until the room slowly becomes populated with pets. At the pets’ eye level, the camera follows the events with precise regularity, giving the beholder an unusual perspective amidst the increasing disorder. With stoic instinct, the four-legged creatures seize the humans’ territory and gradually turn it into an absolute chaos. The livening room, completely devoid of humans, becomes a revolving stage on which a showpiece on the species’ behavioural patterns can be studied, sometimes appearing comical and sometimes absurd, especially when they seem so ‘human’.

As in the earlier works, Corinna Schnitt also investigates the limits of artificiality and absurdity of the standard worlds of civilisation in this film, combining an almost academic meticulousness in her camera work with humerous details in the story. (Katja Albers)

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