Joas Nebe

Leaving A Message The Inefficient Way #1

2021

The video works of this series are a further research on how human communication works and which implications may guide to serious consequences like war, murder, torture all the evil things that make life a hell. Ok, even a slight misunderstanding might have less serious consequences as described. Your girl friend might leave you by misunderstanding a kiss you exchange with your collaborator, your wife may kick you out of your apartment, because you hugged your neighbor etc. etc. pp..

The first film, which is actually an video installation, focusses on how uniforms, even costumes at Mardi Gras - which are eventually a kind of uniform, too, because the individual is hidden behind the mask and the cloths, which a larger group of people wear. All in the same dress, all with the same mask, all part of a greater being. In earlier times (some Mardi Gras groups in the German Southwest are looking back to a history which is more then 500 years), the silent majority used to be repressed and Mardi Gras used to be the only opportunity to mirror the cruelty to the depressing one percent by the 99 percent.

Monsters are everywhere, monsters are us without soul.

Today even smoking is forbidden in this Mardi Gras groups, because it would betray the individual between the alike looking, uniformed people forming a group rather than a assembly of human beings by denying the characteristics of an individual person.

Monsters are economical progress.

Using in the first video work of this series Mardi Gras footage is the one element of this video work. By letting a set of balloons crossing the screen is another, citing the morse alphabet of the early days of communication technology, the shorter or longer appearance of balloons in this work form the title of the work, Leaving a message the inefficient way.

Without monsters and demons we should stop trying anything.

BIO

Joas Nebe, who holds degrees in psychology and literature, is a self-taught artist born in Hamburg but now located in South Germany. After a few years in Berlin, he decided to move south, close to the French and Swiss border. Important exhibits include the artist´s  “Climate Change Cartoons“ on display on exhibition "Letters from the Sky" which accompanied the Durban UN conference on Climate Change 2011 in South Africa and "Machine Fair"- a film about the mechanical site of a metropolis- shown at Museum of Modern Art, Moscow as part of "Now&After" screening in 2012. Other film works has been shown at the 25th Festival Les Instants Video (Biblioteca Alexandrina, Cairo), Videoformes Festival 2014 and 2015, Sustain Our Africa, Madatac 3, 4, 5, 6 Competitive Official International Selection (Madrid), Papy Gyros Nights 2016 Hong Kong/ ART_TECTURE, In 24hours: Future Visions (SHIFT:ibpcpa) 2020, just to name a few. 2021 Joas Nebe received the Audience Award at 1st International Conceptual Art Biennale in Latvia.

http://www.jsnebe.de/

https://joasnebe.wordpress.com

https://www.instagram.com/joas.nebe