Beat Streuli
Clémenceau 06
Clémenceau 06, 2006
HD video installation, size variable, 30min.
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
2008-001-001
b. 1957 (Altdorf, CH), lives and works in Duesseldorf, DE and Brussels, BE
They are photographs of man as flâneur in the midst of his environment; the flow of time in uncommented movements, a smooth, gliding motion. Where are they going and where do they want to go? Streuli does not ask these questions. He observes, and in the process, arouses the desire to be immersed, in order to understand the dynamics of restlessness in the modern era. “Clémenceau 06” shows the Brussels that lies before his front door – a place where people from all around the globe assemble and become a homogenous mass, despite their different international identities. Only the observer has to decide what is worth looking at: what is important or unimportant. Voyeurism is provoked, yet the intention remains questionable, since apathy and passive observation are the ingredients in the beguiling distillation of Streuli’s work, as he adapts this urban space into a machine that equalises the individual with the collective.