Kurt d'Haeseleer (be): Scripted Emotions

'Scripted Emotions' by Kurt d'Haeseleer is an interactive panoramic installation which is to be experienced through two sets of touristic binoculars placed at a site overlooking the city. If one takes a look through the binoculars, however, a different panorama is being presented. Each of the two binoculars offers a range of 180 degrees and shows its own filmic atmosphere: one setting is that of a nightly parking lot, the other of a city park. Within the settings Kurt d’Haeseleer is toying with a pseudo-romantic drama in which the protagonists appear, disappear and reappear, seemingly without logic.
Only fragments of a narrative are handed to the spectator who is invited to piece them together in his or her mind. After gazing extensively at the panoramic and layered landscape, it becomes clear that the real protagonist is the landscape itself in which figures and buildings are placed and displaced. The work is reminiscent of the optical illusion machines - the ancestors of cinematic art - and offers a modern tromp l’oeil. (transmediale.07 jury statement)