Establishing Eden

Broersen & Lukács

Netherlands – 2016
Video – duration 10 min

New Zealand’s forests, green hills and spectacular rock formations are popular among filmmakers. In blockbusters like Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) and the Lord of the Rings film series (Peter Jackson, 2001-2014), these shots carry the viewer to another world, a new garden of Eden, evergreen and unspoiled. In Establishing Eden, Broersen & Lukács focus on the establishing shot: the shots in which a landscape is identified and becomes one of the main protagonists in a film. Here, however, the image is fragmented, fiction takes over reality: mountains and forests exist for their cinematic alter egos. Paradise is a seductive construction that could explode at any moment.

Margit Lukács & Persijn Broersen

― Artist

Margit Lukács and Persijn Broersen are artists based in Amsterdam, working together since 2002. In today’s visual culture, fiction is usurping the place of reality. Broersen & Lukács respond to this by creating video animations presenting a parallel world of spectacular images that wholly absorb the viewer in which 'nature' functions as a mirror for our media-dictated culture. Their works, consisting of layered projections, digital animations and spatial installations, have been exhibited by renowned institutions and organisations for instance at the Biennale of Sydney (Australia), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL), FOAM (NL), MUHKA (BE), Centre Pompidou (FR), Wuzhen Biennale(CH), Kröller Müller (NL).

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