Susanne Kienbaum

‚Kambodscha 1975 – Deutschland 2003’
Object-Video-Installation
© Susanne Kienbaum 2003

Dimensions: Little Bed 50 x 80 x 40, little monitor 30 x 20 x 20 cm, overall dimensions variable
Materials: black-painted copper, leather, feathers, little monitor, video loop

In my childhood the symbol and buzzword for crime and cruelty was ‘Kambodscha’. It was not even yet that we started to look television, we just heard grown-ups talking about it and as a child and in my fantasy I imagined cruel images which were unbelievable. – In 2003 I had the opportunity to travel through Cambodia and to make a short film about Tuol Sleng near Pnom Penh, where in a former school which today is a museum a documentation on torture and the cruelties committed by the Pol Pot during the seventies is exhibited to the public. – The subtle connection between the video and the little-bed-and-childhood-installation is just the checked pattern of the mattress cover and the floor of the former school: the typical pattern of colonial style – Cambodia being a former French colony. This checked pattern does raise the question on whether and how our Western societies are somehow and somewhat connected to such incredible genocides and catastrophes happening all-over the so-called third world where only on a first glance Western societies do seem to have nothing to do with.

Concept | Realization: Susanne Kienbaum
Zirngibl und Langwieser, Kurfürstendamm 54-55, D-10707 Berlin

Foto and Videostills: © Susanne Kienbaum