Daniel Keller
Soft Staycation Istanbul (Gaze Track Edit), 2014
Flexible LED video curtain display Windows PC video
240 x 440 cm
94 7/16 x 173 3/16 ins
94 7/16 x 173 3/16 ins
A Tobii gaze-tracking camera measures the eye movements of a group of unemployed Hartz-IV recipients and expat freelancers. Keller plays the role of ‘job creator’, hiring these candidates from Craigslist...
A Tobii gaze-tracking camera measures the eye movements of a group of unemployed Hartz-IV recipients and expat freelancers. Keller plays the role of ‘job creator’, hiring these candidates from Craigslist to watch a 30 minute compilation of national tourism ads sponsored by various publicly funded tourism boards. The relentlessness of the source material hints at a trend towards the traditional Nation State transforming into something more like a multitude of competing citizen/tourist experience brands, similarly to the collected various 'offshore' economy or 'secrecy jurisdictions' competing with each other to launder the wealth of the global elite. Instead of applying the gathered gaze data to any specific research purpose (like optimizing advertising strategies) the work simply appropriates the outsourced subject's gaze-data into a spectacle of info-decor, illuminated on a massive Chinese-produced LED video curtain. The consumptive gaze of the test subjects is transmuted into a productive brushstroke of value creation, tastefully arranged by the artist into a sculptural composition.