For some time artistic disciplines that find expression through technological images have embraced an approach thematizing the possibilities and the limits of the very essence of the medium itself.
However, instead of being (only) concerned with achieving a perfect technological illusion, they appreciate the socio-anthropological dimension of the situation; the cohabitation of an individual and society using different image-based strategies. The concepts of the artists coming from this school of thinking reflect the post-modernist discourse on reality in the sense that they approach it as a construct the roots of which (for example with regards to the traditional systems of values, etc.) are far from being fixed and as such need to be continuously under scrutinization. In her work, the Austrian artist Dorit Margreiter (*1967) concentrates on exploring the domain of film and television and their relationship towards the architectural and social perception of space. The exhibited video installations and photographs show a real family home designed by the American architect John Lautner, which was featured in a number of Hollywood movies as an "evil place" (The Big Lebowski, Charlie's Angels, Playing God etc.). Margreiter examines this "architectural nightmare" to cast a doubt on the conventions of film presentation and to put forward, within the interactions in architectural space, new, unexpected ways of how it can be approached. The key moment is a documentary film strategy built around a static film shot. Its confrontation with Lautner's architecture, exuding an air of defying physical laws, does not give a neutral, objective impression, but, rather surprisingly, acts almost mysteriously. In order to alert the viewer the sequence was interspersed with short takes from performances held in Lautner's architecture by an obscure artistic group the Toxic Titties. Insecurity stemming from the clash of two approaches felt behind the watching of the film footage reveals a glimpse of the magic power of the TV screen as one of the principal elements forming our view of the world. Dorit Margreiter transformed the exhibition hall into a "black box", a place outside time and space. Compared to a traditional film screening the viewers experience something of a reversed film script where production and reproduction intermingle in a complicated network of relationships. In other words, the viewer is confronted with permanently changing levels of representation, which raise questions concerning the impact of the media and the production of various schemes and formats which are today at the very root of the existence of the media.
