Simone Zaugg

In ‘Everybody Loves the Crime’ Simone Zaugg focuses on hidden or latent forms of violence that exist in the private rather than the public domain. The installation is comprised of a sparsely decorated living room. On a TV set images of a front garden idyll play repeatedly. On the wall opposite the TV set is a projection of the room itself, alternated with a sequence of a close-up images of someone's arm, engaged in shooting practice. This double mirroring causes a strange disorientation of perception in the viewer. Underlying the homely cosiness of the domestic interior and the well-manicured garden outside, is a dark and disturbing but ambiguous sub-text which intimates a host of possible violent scenarios. Apart from being a critique on the often deceptive facade behind the supposed comfort and security of the home, the idea of the work points to the disconnect between the inside and the outside, public and private, what can be seen and what not. More importantly, however, this work is a reminder that violence can take place in the most familiar and shielded of environments.

Everybody loves the Crime, by Simone Zaugg

"It is not the source of experience which enables you to understand, rather it is the mirroring of the visible reality that lets you see apparent day-to-dayness which moves on the borderline between the dangerous and the criminal, between the physical and the psychic, between the formal and the social, between the public
and the private, between voyeurism and insight."

The moving view along the frighteningly clean and empty gardens and housefronts is taken into the living room. The video (tape 1) is shown in a TV on a small table in front of a cupboard standing beside a lamp.
Easy-listening underlines the unbelievable endlessness of this idyll. Opposite on the wall, the living-room-installation with the cupboard, the table and the lamp is mirrored. The projection (tape 2) comes out of reality, i.e. from the real cupboard: it is simultnaeously a video-mirror and a window into fiction. The sound of the gunshots which are fired in this window penetrate the facades of the houses. The play between reality and fiction has started: Everybody loves the crime.

Idea and realization: Simone Zaugg
Camera: Simone Zaugg, Dorothée Hahne (gunshots)
Editing and composition: Simone Zaugg
Sound: Simone Zaugg
Music: Avvikko

picture 1: Everybody 3 (big videoprojection, which is simultaneously
a video-mirror and a window into fiction.
picture 2: Everybody 1 (whole space/total)
picture 3: Everybody 2 (Installation with cupboard, table, lamp and monitor,
in which you see frighteningly clean and empty gardens and housefronts.)
The sound of the gunshots which are fired in this window penetrate the facades of the houses.