Passers-by - The world of two velocities
Content copyright 2022
marianne mettler
All rigths reserved
In meiner Serie “Die Welt der zwei Geschwindigkeiten” messe ich den Puls konträrer Lebensumstände und Landschaften. Ich baue Brücken zu dem Gestern und Heute indem ich Bilder unterschiedlicher Temperatur einander gegenüberstelle. Auf der einen Seite die Entfremdung im Geschwindigkeitsdiktat der Grossstadt in der sich jeder seinen Weg freikämpfen muss. Auf der anderen Seite das scheinbar Langsame des ruralen Lebens das eher ein Innehalten ist. Hier geht es um Dynamik und Enge dort um Ruhe und Müssiggang. Es bleibt genug Zeit die Dinge des Lebens zu beobachten.
Thus, in my series “The World of Two Velocities”, I measure the pulse in contrary living circumstances and landscapes. I build bridges between the past and present by juxtaposing pictures with different temperatures. On the one hand, one experiences the alienation resulting from the velocity dictated by living in a metropolis where everybody has to fight to pursue his own way. On the other hand, I set the focus on the slowness of rural life which naturally engages in contemplation. The first stands for drive and constriction while the latter expresses quietude and idleness which in turn encourages us to use time in order to study life itself.
May 2014 Exhibition Los Angeles Digital Art Center
Franz Kafka
Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir
When you go walking by night up a street and a man, visible a long way off - for the street mounts uphill and there is a full moon - comes running toward you, well, you don't catch hold of him, not even if he is a feeble and ragged creature, not even if someone chases yelling at his heels, but you let him run on.
For it is night, and you can't help it if the street goes uphill before you in the moonlight, and besides, these two have maybe started that chase to amuse themselves, or perhaps they are both chasing a third, perhaps the first is an innocent man and the second wants to murder him and you would become an accessory, perhaps they don't know anything about each other and are merely running separately home to bed, perhaps they are night birds, perhaps the first man is armed.
And anyhow, haven't you a right to be tired, haven't you been drinking a lot of wine? You're thankful that the second man is now long out of sight.
