David le Viseur

The contestants are: An Internet-Porno and The Old and New Testament. The fight takes place in the digital world. Porno and Bible are both files. They are purely syntactically coded entities in a word: They’re texts. At the beginning of the movie we see, how the video is created. The Bible-file is opened, copied, the porno file is opened as a text, the Bible text is pasted into the video-text, saved as a video and then played. One medium is interpreted in another medium. The Bible literally becomes film.

This method results in a deep corruption of the video. This artifact-video has a property that’s unique in the digital world: It cannot be digitally saved or copied. A digital paradox. Only by transfer into the analog domain is it possible to capture the fight. An echo of the inscrutability of both faith and sex. One is reminded of the second commandment: „Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image“.

By fusing two functional elements they corrupt each other and become dysfunctional. Similar to the works of Pablo Picasso or Francis Bacon, the true nature of the object is evoked by its fragmentation and distortion. In „porno vs. bible“ the fight occurs on several levels: text vs. video, old vs. new, mind vs. body, male vs. female. The artist merely acts as an experimenter or boxing promoter. The fight happens in the mind of the viewer. He’s the judge.
The fundamental question of pornography and voyeurism is: What is happening? – Yes, indeed they do it! Pornos aim at a well-known end: The epiphany of the ejaculation. The fundamental question of religion is: What does it mean? The end is also well-known: The Apocalypse.