Debt Ceiling

In his work Bob Demper creates stories, images and spaces that often find their place on a fringe: between dreaming and waking, physical and mental space, facade and interior, personal memory and symbolism. This is the result of a constant interaction between personal stories, extensive research and references to the medium of cinema. Recurring in his practice is a strong interest in the concept of power, a term that seems to become more elusive with each attempt at understanding or defining it. He investigates how the creation and management of power has developed and in particular the influence it can have on the mental state of an individual or a group. By using recognizable cinematic motifs he raises expectations that can be subverted, fulfilled or deconstructed. Ideas and narratives that appear in his longer filmic work fragment into shorter videos, sculptures and installations creating a rhizomatic body of work.

The installation shown at Art au Centre sketches a quintessential interrogation room, a space primarily designed to create a false sense of agency that makes an interviewee behave in the most desirable manner. The notion of this mechanical malleability is further explored in a set of clock-like sculptures, that are loosely based on unrealised automatons by Heron of Alexandria.