(capsules) is a series of temporary installations that take over vacant shop windows, bringing contemporary art proposals to unexpected corners of the city and opening up urban spaces to contemporary creation 24/7.
(capsules) benefits from the generous support of the City of Luxembourg.
With the kind support of ERCO
Ben Greber
High Fidelity
Location
11, rue du Fort Bourbon
L-1249 Luxembourg
Ben Greber's work examines and documents an advancing de-objectification brought about by technological development. He regards this reification, and the resulting loss of visibility of all social processes and cohesions, as a fundamental characteristic of our time.
The proposal High Fidelity consists of four plastic casts of Hi-Fi components: a record player (which already exists), an amplifier and two speakers (the latter three to be produced for Capsules in the same style as the record player). The four objects are placed on a display unit and arranged like a classic presentation in a Hi-Fi shop window. Despite their hyper-aesthetic, shiny surfaces, the casts are not intact. Cracked and resembling crumbling concrete, they become ruins of their own image and so embody the process of their own de-objectification.
Since the post-war period, the stereo system has been an important status symbol and an indispensable part of stylish interior design. The promise of the best possible sound experience that it carried was replaced in the 2000s by the invention of the MP3 format and the emerging culture of infinite availability. With this new technology disappeared a piece of furniture that had legitimised the spacious living room, which became the new standard of living in the second half of the twentieth century.
In the twentieth century, the shop window was a place of longing: it showed not only what one could have, but above all what one could not. Today, instead of gazing at illuminated displays on night-time walks, we stare at mobile phone screens that offer us virtual content. Online shopping, along with the fundamental loss of significance of materiality, has plunged retail, and with it the very idea of the shop window, into a crisis of meaning. High Fidelity addresses the shop window as a space for viewing the unattainable. Instead of objects of desire, however, it presents the remnants of an obsolete past.
Discover the ART WALK by downloading the map here.
