20 Menoc Hotel

Sound slide show of 81 color photographs

In their projection "Sans titre (der Beuteträger)", this duo of Swiss artists perhaps embodies a form of disillusioned neo-primitivism. They present themselves as survivors of a progressive cataclysm, now navigating within a hostile natural environment. Adorned with accessories that are remnants of the disappeared civilization, they mimic the poses of outdated anthropological portraits that would have been made by the "civilized" colonizer encountering the "primitive" during expeditions. All attitudes and accoutrements are reinterpreted in a burlesque mode: penile sheath in an aluminum box, weapons for hunting, culminating in their appellation "der Beuteträger" ("the prey bearer") evoking protohistory and its hunter-gatherers. Thus, the catastrophic evolution of the species allows for the realization of the ethnocentric myth of the noble savage, a being without culture who, like an animal, knows how to adapt to the worst.