Time plays an important role in Germaine Koh's conceptual projects. Unobtrusively they have reached a large public which is not meant to recognise them immediately as art. Their meaning is contained in a continuous succession of fleeting moments stretching over a period of months or even years. '30 FPM' (1999) is such a project, this time for a newspaper. For a whole month a photograph is printed in the same place in a newspaper. The photographs have no particularly relation to each other; they are pictures of random objects and situations taken from Koh's everyday world, but when they are finally seen together they begin to make their own connections. The story that develops is comparable to a film in super slow-motion that takes place in real time, But instead of thirty frames per second this one consists of thirty frames per month. 'La Pièce' is a video lasting eight hours, which appears to happen in real time and space. A monitor stands at the top end of a table. The visitor can sit down opposite it. We see very lengthy shots of two public benches containing a group of four men. They eat, drink, talk, and gaze at what is going on around them. The weather changes and other people join them and then depart; night falls and day dawns. The visitor who sits out this time is no longer someone observing the men but one of them. 'Trek' (1997) shows a series of episodes from the life of a paper napkin. It is followed on an unpredictable journey through a series of anonymous city sights. Carried along by the wind, it appears to fly and frolic by itself, and seems almost to be alive. The trivial object is accorded an identity of its own and the video takes on all the panache of a large-scale adventure movie.
– Nathalie Zonnenberg
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Germaine Koh ° 1967, Georgetown (Malaysia)
Lives and works in Toronto (Canada)
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