‘Clockwork Toy’ footage is based on footage shot on the occasion of this years Mardi Gras parade in Southern Germany. The Mardi Gras parade was held one week before the outbreak of COVID-19 in Southern Germany and Alsace, France. The footage has been altered to nearly abstract pattern. These patterns are oscillating between recognisable part [a mask, a part of a costume] and really abstract pattern, maybe similar to a kaleidoscope.
To Nebe, “fantasy and creative intelligence are important survival skills today.” So is chess, an analogy he keeps referring to: “Chess exemplifies my game with the viewer. In a world of shortening attention spans, it’s an ideal concentration-practice. One always has to think a few steps in advance.” By screening the insanity of our daily chase towards evolutionary bankruptcy, Nebe in a clever move takes the reason prisoner, only to appoint reason to be the king of his game of chess. He calls for a close review of the encyclopedia of our philosophical and cultural foundations. In his opinion reason has the potential to direct a path away from the horror vacui he is depicting: “The model of enlightenment has increasingly been discredited, wrongfully I believe. Today survival and coexistence are only possible if governed by the faculty of reason. Labeling and connoting intellectual categories help to bring new relations into sight and to gain unexpected terms of knowledge.”
