Gusztáv Hámos
«Seins-Fiction»

From science fiction to ‘Seins-Fiction' (a wordplay on the German word for ‘existence, being') – Gusztáv Hámos, who in 1979 emigrated from Budapest to West Berlin, with his first videotape (also implemented as a video installation in 1981) delivered a successful visual analysis of the duplication of reality by the media. A relationship of reciprocal inspection or correction develops between the left- and right-hand monitor. Alongside almost stereotypical visual sequences, this dialectic also incorporates dissociative sequences that blur the distinction between fact and fiction. The production combines purely formal studies of the way media reality is perceived with the documentation of ‘real' backdrops creating the surreal stations in a fictional reality – the tube stations in East Berlin through which, until the Wall fell, the trains of the West Berlin transport corporation travelled without stopping.
In ‘Luck Smith' of 1987, Hámos once again used the tube station motif, this time in a video clip made more dense by electronic means.

Rudolf Frieling