Eric Lanz
«Les habits – Genres»

Eric Lanz has been developing video tapes and installations since the early 80s. Since 1990 he has produced series, ironic and poetical encyclopaedias, in which things, in most cases (tools, gloves, clothes) are collected, classified, juxtaposed and compared. Short video sequences about their use and gestures used when touching and choosing them, or taking them on and off, are built into these works, without their actually being interactive for the viewer.
'Les habits: Genres' is a video projection showing a whole variety of garments arranged next to each other. A fictitious user (also a projection, roughly life-size) stands in for the viewer in the virtual space behind the projection screen: he uses gestures to choose a succession of new clothes, which are projected on to his body in the appropriate place. In between, he calls up short video sequences in which the particular garment is tried on an actual body, It is only here that we acquire a sense of material quality and are able to distinguish between the various materials.