INSTANT FICTION is a live media installation by Sarah van Lamsweerde, on display until the 18th of Februari in De Brakke Grond in Amsterdam during the Something Raw Festival. The project was inspired by CCTV, which is found everywhere nowadays: stores, parking lots, nightclubs and so on. This can have a rather alienating effect: waiting in line at the gas station staring at a monitor and going ‘hey I’m on tv?!’.

During Something Raw the cashier, café and foyer are filmed continously by camera’s that are controlled from a distance. The result can be followed in real-time on tv screens that are scattered throughout the building. The only difference with a regular security installation: the images are substitled. On first glance the text seems to have little relation to the imagery, but the longer we watch, the more image and text are interwoven.

This results in a playful and alienating situation, in which visitors are suddenly turned into actors of the everyday. For Something Raw the subtitles are selected from movies such as Together (Lukas Moodysson), The Damned (Luchino Visconti), It’s a Free World (Ken Loach), El Ángel Exterminador (Luis Buñuel) and the American series True Blood.