'March KONKRET', the first work in the 'March' series (created between 1984 and 2000), can be interpreted as an early attempt to translate the artistic concept of the collage into video art. It starts with almost picturesque impressions of a drumming movement, images that were recorded during a performance at the artists' initiative AORTA in Amsterdam, accompanied with music by Gustav Mahler. The rest of the tape consists mainly of 'found footage' originating from Umatic tapes which the artists bought at the Waterlooplein market in Amsterdam. For example, there is footage from the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, followed by images of squatters' riots on the Vondelstraat in Amsterdam. A Dutch armoured car navigates a barricade of stones; an image that keeps repeating …tself. Sound and visual material melt together into a threatening whole: drumbeats, a helicopter, Dutch riot police, a model in a bathing suit. Time and time again these images keep recurring, each time combined with new elements that refer to sports events and military marches, characteristic phenomena of the mass society. Here, in an associative manner, a connection is made between the formalized aesthetics of sport and fashion, police and army, with a critical comment on the marriage between war and spectacle, violence and commerce, and the question being raised of the borderline between guilt and innocence. 'March KONKRET' thus remains fairly unambiguous in its political implications.

'KONKRET' refers to 'concrete'. Read more...