HOME/NOME
Berlin, DE
2021
Super Nintendo Entertainment Systems, Bang & Olufsen TV sets, Mario Paint game cardridges from 1992, Mini DV video
Variable dimensions depending on available space
The
video installation HOME/NOME by Lars Preisser consists of a film that
shows the making of an exhibition as well as the exhibition pieces that can be
seen in this video. Lars Preisser deals thematically with the apartment in
which he grew up in Berlin in the 90s and which became a gallery for contemporary
art in the course of gentrification. In minimalist animations painstakingly
created on old Super Nintendo consoles from that time, the artist recalls
various incidents from that period. Old home videos serve him as a template for
the interiors of that time, which he now traces on the antiquated 16-bit game
console and the game Mario Paint. In one scene, a rat peeks out of the toilet
that the parents had to tape up at night so that the rats could not get into
the apartment, in another scene, the stroller is burning in the hallway of the
building . The artist's parents had moved to Berlin in the late 80s, at a time
when gentrification had already become a problem of which they were now part. In 2021, some 30 years later, Preisser
then enters his former home, he has since become an artist and his former home,
appropriately enough, a gallery called NOME. In the rooms of NOME, in which
hardly anything of the former apartment is recognizable, he now installs
televisions and SNES
consoles
that show the animated rooms of that time at the corresponding locations in the
gallery. One TV, for example, is located in the office area of the gallery
where there used to be a living room and where the artist played Super Nintendo
as a child. Another TV stands in the gallery's storage room, the former
children's room. Preisser filmed his installative intervention in the former
apartment to capture the brief moment in which he was able to artistically
juxtapose the old spaces with the new. In essence, the work points to complex
gentrification processes and changes in urban space, but most striking are the
characteristic animations that give an insight into the time, into the almost
surreal occurrences from the perspective of a child in a Berlin apartment. The
fact that this living space ultimately became a commercial art space might be regrettable, but on the other hand it made
this artistic work possible.
For the project I received the Berlin research stipend and I am also very thankful to
Luca Barbeni and Olga
Boiocchi
of NOME Gallery for letting me setup this very personal exhibition in my old home/their gallery during Covid.
The project has also been shown at MMF Milan Machinima Festival curated by
Matteo Bittanti.
https://milanmachinimafestival.org/vral-lars-preisser
Back to list of projects
Home/Nome, B&O TV and SNES at NOME Gallery
Mini DV video still of gallery door looking inside at TV sets and SNES consoles one depicting the bar space that my father ran illegaly while we lived there and the other screen shows the old facade which was not white yet and a policeman in the old German green uniform. A childhood memory of Mayday when we would watch policemen passing by our window.
My old room and the former toilet became NOME’s art storage space.
SNES drawing/animation of that living room
Our former living room where our small TV used to be next to the oven, which does not stand 30 years later I installed my childhood game console (SNES) at the very same place and show the old space within the new space that is a gallery.
My parents used to keep our stroller in the entrance hallway.
Old photo of me and my siblings playing SNES in the living room which became what you see above.
One day someone set it on fire.
HOME/NOME, SNES animation of Landwehrkanal and memory of Berlin Wall, in the back an animation of my father’s old room can be seen. I used to have a pet bunny that jumped around there.
Video documentation of exhibition at NOME Gallery which moved into my childhood home.