Jump into the barrel! Go on, jump! You're not under the training barrel, it doesn't make sense!

You just go right past them, they're not so fast ... No! Fallen down – dead.

The Bomb King must be finished off. A question mark can only be opened by an exclamation mark. We don't need to go to the heart any more because we've got enough power. – What seems to us to be absurd or a kind of secret language is a natural form of communication for the four protagonists of Benjamin Heisenberg's video installation and radio remix. Imperatives of the type mentioned tell the inexperienced and ignorant how to react in the virtual world of a computer game. Didactic: "Start! ... Now collect all the grenades, yes the funny apples there, they look like apples but they're grenades." Solicitous: "Stop, it's just about to explode!, throw it away! Throw it away! ... Phew! That was close!" After a time these statements, taken here out of context, gain meaning, depth, even something magical, in addition to their comic aspect. Der Bombenkönig is a phenomenological study, an alien view of an intangible world which takes possession of us. Here Benjamin Heisenberg playfully extracts character systems from their context, recombines them to form a hermetic statement – and thus exposes the vulnerability of our conceptual world. In the video installation the four protagonists act separately; the radio mix combines the sound tracks to form a fictitious group play situation.

Benjamin Heisenberg
sculptor, film-maker, lives in Munich. Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and the Film and Television College in Munich. Co-editor of the film journal Revolver; organisation of group exhibitions, including München liegt am Meer (1995). Films, including Am See, feature film (1998); videos/installations Es zogen einst... (1995), Hastewas Bistewas (1997), Der Bombenkönig (2000), awarded the Graphic Arts Prize of the City of Munich

Schattenfeld Film 2000
BR/intermedium 2 2002