Darren Almond (b. 1971)
Geisterbahn (1999)
Darren Almond was born in 1971 in Wigan (England), and he currently lives and works in London. This British artist is renowned for his original use of video in art installations. He specialises in combining both sound and images so as to make the viewer experience a vision of temporality. His approach is not based on direct confrontation, but rather involves playing on the mechanisms of perception to achieve the desired outcome. He creates images like a painter, combining stillness with motion, or commonplace situations with more theatrical actions. During the filming of Geisterbahn at a fairground in Vienna, Darren Almond fastened his camera to the front of the first car in a ghost train, placing its lens through the eyeball of a human skull. Backed by the Techno tracks of Berliner Stefan Betke, better known within the Techno scene as “Pole”, Geisterbahn makes us shiver to the rhythm of this ballad in black and white. What at first appears to be mere bad taste coarsely pieced together suddenly transforms and acquires a certain lyricism and dreamlike quality.