LOOKS LIKE VERMEER
video color 8:16min, 2004


In April 2004 we participated in "Get Off: Exploring the Pleasure Principle", an exhibition at the Museum of Sex, which investigated sexual titillation as a means to examine relationships with pleasure in society.
For the show we covered all walls of the museum's display window on 5th Ave. with mirrors. 24 hours a day passer's by could watch and hear, how three men were watching, framing, commenting and videotaping what was happening in the some hotel windows across from them.



HK: Oh my god.
MB: This is really good man. Frame this up. Frame this up. This is just a little piece here.
HK: Don’t move camera.
MB: Has she just dressed? No, no. Is that her wardrobe, or…?
HM: I am wondering if they are making kind of a trash film.
MB: Art project, probably.
HK: This is what?
HM: Hilton.
HK: Hilton Hotel?
HM: Right now, live. It’s live from the Hilton Hotel.
HK: 24 hours.
MB: Yeah man. If you level the camera, this is a Master Piece. Biennial material.
HK: Oh, oh, oh,oh. Matt, make good angle.
MB: This is even better. We got the total. This is top voyeurism.
HK: Matt. Make good angle. Make a good angle.
MB: I just want to adjust it.
HM: Look through the lens.
HK: Tiny monitor. Matt. It does not matter. Tiny monitor.
MB: Now we are talking. We just got to level it a little bit.



HK: Wow, she is telephoning.
MB: This is so good. This is so good man.
HK: What is she doing? Recording now?
HM: This is incredible. I think the top floor is done with their shooting.
MB: May be. May be break.
HM: I also like the window. The curtain. It’s meant for looking in, or?
HK: Oh!
MB: Oh good. Funny. I hope you have enough tape and everything.
HM: She is almost getting out of the window.
MB: I know. And then there are these characters. Moving around.
HM: I don’t know if they are waiting for…may be the main actor is in the restroom? Strange, they had the main action on the top floor and now…
MB: Yeah, they started there. I don’t understand, what’s happening. Especially now, this is totally absurd. If you just saw this on a monitor – you have no idea. You kind of could guess what was happening, but… Now she is smoking.
HM: This is so much like a cliché.
MB: It’s so cliché. On the phone, towel..
HM:…undressed. Out of the bathroom, on the phone, smoking.



MB: Come on, yes. Yes. Oh yeah.
HK: What, what? Recreational people, working?
MB: Come on, man. This is where they all started, the story began. This is…get back in the windows! I think they are taking a break and changing wardrobe.
HM: But they don’t need wardrobe…
MB: Oh, oh! Yes. Yes. Yes. Time to get back to work.
HK: Oh yeah! Look, what they put up there.
HM: Hu, it’s so cool.
MB: What the hell are they doing? They got a gigantic…chair...or what is that?
HM: Something is going on over here and something over there.
MB: It’s wardrobe and the photographers. It’s a fashion shoot.
HM: Do you think it is a fashion shoot? The one girl was naked before.
MB: That’s fashion.
HM: What kind of fashion is naked then?
MB: All kinds of fashion. Prada. This is so good. They are setting up the shot now. Somebody accidentally hit the stroke.
HM: You don’t know, where to watch.
MB: Yeah, you are pulled in the two directions of the frame, cause one is so obscure.
HK: Ey, change the other people angle.
MB: Oh, no. I think there isn’t any more action.
HK: Oh yeah?
HM: Right now.
MB: Looks like it is a Vermeer. That’s why I like it.
HM: Looks like this French anarchist film.
MB: Society and spectacle?
HM: No that’s not a movie. No, with Michel Piccoli…,where he is living in this apartment and breaking down the walls.
MB: I don’t know this film.




HM: Which window are you watching, Hoon?
HK: I look at other one.
HM: No.
HK: I am not allowed?
HM: No, no channel switching.
MB: It’s very slow.
HM: I am wasting my tape.
HK: May you can find a more interesting part.
HM: It’s ok. I captured another video before, where I think, they have been really naked. That’s when I was attracted. But this lady down there, she is great too.
MB. Yes, she is the star. But now she left. As soon as I get the film camera going. This is typical of me.
HK: They are now take off?
MB: May be she comes back. The flashes are great.
HM: That’s why I thought it makes the whole thing worth taping it.
HK: This is just one room?
MB: Yeah, there are too many people in this room. Too many people working in pornography.
HM: Yeah?
MB: Otherwise you wouldn’t have so many people, I think. They only reason, why you have so many people working is, because you have to pay all of them.
HK: She does make up now?
MB: Come back, baby. Come back.
HK: You know, the other people look at us.
HM: No, nobody can look at us. We are too high. That’s our position here. Only we can look at other people.
MB: That’s it.
HM: Yeah, that’s it.
MB: Oh, is she back?
HM: No.

Matt Bakkom, Hoon Kim, Hajoe Moderegger (May2001, WTC)

 

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