TimeOut Magazine (See PDF version)

Wall Candy

Fancy a bit of pre-pubescent wallpaper wafting through your living room.So passe? Not when it is flat-screen DVD that augurs the interior decoration of the future. In blurry, boiled-sweet colours, glimpses of undies and attractive youth circulate round the screen in a continuous flow of images that provide a visual presence in the home environment. Kindergarten is one of a series of DVDs produced by Souvenirs from the Earth (www.souvenirsfromtheearth.com), set up in 2001 with offices in Paris and Cologne by former TF1 joumalist Laurent and German video artist Marcus Kreiss.Falling somewhere between artist's video and ambient pop, Laurent and Kreiss mix technology with nostalgia. 'Our images are poetic and at times abstract: says Laurent, who plays on the kidults trend.Other videos include Beach ('a beach scene in Barcelona, a mass of people in flashy swimsuits, playing, kissing and bathing in the green Mediterranean sea'), Camping and Skating or the more prosaic Metro and Lift. 'In 2050, the earth will have exploded; luckily we have filmed everyday things that we will watch in our space ship.' Kindergarten was sold with Chillout, a book on cool spaces, available in cool places such as the Palais de Tokyo, Bookstorming and Colette.Made-to-measure DVDs and events have rangedf rom a Matrix launch party to the programmable,food-inspired visual environment for Mix, the latest Alain Ducasse/Patrick Jouin collaboration in New York.Above all, though, Laurent is counting on the rapid spread of flat, plasma screens creating a new relationship with the screen, as video art and ambient environments replace paintings in the home. 'One can turn on the TV for other things than watching TV. One hangs it on the wall like a painting: says Laurent, who admits that his own screen, switched on all the time, hangs on the wall in a fluorescent orange frame. As well as plans for further DVD-book combos, Laurent has set his sights on continuous TV as a medium for artists' videos and is already broadcasting nightly between midnight and 6am on Hessicher Rundfunk, a local TV station in Frankfurt.
Natasha Edwards