by Johannes Lothar Schroeder
to Kimberly Horton
10.04.2008 EINSTELLUNGSRAUM e.V.

In a variation of the year theme and also playing with the word Kimberly Horton named her exhibition 'Flee or Break', and aside the word 'flee' she put a verb that has manifold meenings (in the German text those different meanings follow here: ãzerbrechenÒ, ãkaputt machenÒ, ãŸberschreitenÒ, ãaufhšrenÒ or ãabbrechenÒ and so one). Besides the fleeing we are dealing here with changes and a position that won't allow the conventional. Because of this it is also about deconstruction untill a breakthrough is reached.

In the email invitation for the opening of the exhibition there is a biographical note by Kimberly Horton. She is telling about a fright she experienced as a novice driver when a big truck came towards her that intended to make a left turn like herself. The exhibition title "Flee or break" suggests the following scene: one quickly turns in front of the truck and escapes or one waits untill there is a crash.

This is about a daily situation of danger when generally one does not think about details when dealing with it. If one should still do so one notices how many challenges are overcome routinely by which frights are soothed or thrust aside because - to stick to the example - the truck, this monster, is comer closer and closer so that time seems to pass faster than usual. In certain conditions such a situation awakens archaic behavior because work of reason in the neocortex, the cerebral cortex, with its cultural freight is far too slow for necessary daily life decisions. Instead on the inner brain level, the archicortex, a survival program is running that decides directly without intellectual or moral considerations. In this modus the body reacts on reflex and assures survival by flight or offense. Roughly simplified this is the conscious modus for people when driving a car, so that by turning-off of the outer cerebral cortex we become wild creatures. Hunting reflexes and flight instincts then form the basis of our decisions.*

* More details about that for example at:

To master this automatically running archaic and pre-cultural mechanism has much to do with braking because braking is the cultural alternative of flight - so: off the gas pedal bevor it crashes!

Between film and still

But what do these arguments around the subject 'photography and film' help? We are dealing with artists here whose works show that they have found very special ways to deal with movements. So does Kimberly Horton herself trace her work back to braking by connecting 'breaking' and 'film' and 'still photo'.  She says: ÒBraking is in between movies and stills.Ò

This sentence confronts the filming with the stills which are a condensate of the utmost complex, teamwork-organized shooting. Eventually they are hang up in cinemas or made available for feuilletons to advertise for films and to lure us to the cinemas. There we will be confronted with instinct-guided protagonists. They represent the majority of film figures, contrasted by sharply calculating superintendents, detectives and bad guys. The embodiments of the rational lookout on life give us the feeling of possible control even if we feel more drawn to the protagonists that are in love, kill, flee, fight, make catches or act on the brink of nervous break-down. We find it as disturbing as entertaining when we see overworked people of whose inability  and awkwardness, falls and mishaps we even can laugh. It relieves.

To film and to drive