You wonder what you, as a viewer, are going to see in a video work with this title in which scenes whiz by of a panorama of the suburbs of Baghdad and the flat countryside between the Euphrates and the Tigris, shot from a passing car. What you do not get to see - and that is what it is all about - you hear in the personal commentary of the maker. Travelling through Iraq, Gerrets encounters a ubiquitous, but invisible totalitarian regime in which everything is seeped through with political power and fear. Taking shots of 'ordinary' reality is impossible. Such shots are not allowed. In the cradle of human civilization there is a country controlled by strict supervision. A country where reality is forced to be invisible, hijacked by the syvoice. The fleeting shots which at first glance seem to reveal very little, gain their importance in the course of the (text) narrative. More and more, you see what you cannot see. Invisible touches on age-old philosophical questions in which the world of the senses (knowledge through what you see) is set against the world of ideas (knowledge through what you know). This reaches its climax as the screen goes blank and the commentator speaks the words: "The sky is crowded with electronic activity". It is the only way that this artist can orientate himself in this syvoice. "Power is absolute, not something you can argue with", he says as he succeeds in doing exactly that. By making the invisible visible with this work.
– Marieke van Hal
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Editing Ramon Coelho (on-line), Music Terminus Part III, Main, Special thanks to Neil van der Linden, Desiree Delaunay, Kees Wieringa, Rob List, Montevideo/TBA
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