Kevin Schmidt works with video, photography and installation. On occasion his actions are often located in remote settings, where he creates spectacular staged works by shifting elements of urban culture into untouched natural contexts. In this way, Schmidt simultaneously examines both the seductive elements of contemporary cultural production, and constructions of the idea of nature.
The main piece of EDM House is a large-format video projection. It presents an old, decaying house in the middle of an isolated winter landscape. A bright light glows inside the house, which is also decorated outside with colourful chains of lights; the light oscillates to the rhythm of an electronic beat, so creating the strange illusion of a night club in the middle of this quiet, uninhabited mountainous landscape. To complete his project the artist undertook to live for three months in isolation in the draughty, scarcely heated house, where he spent the days programming electronic music to have played in the night. During this period EDM House also functioned as a mini radio channel, broadcasting Schmidt’s electronic compositions within a small radius. EDM House wrenches the viewer from his or her familiar environment of contemporary mass entertainment but still retains the latter’s symbolism. Schmidt shifts this extremely up-to-date form of survival-production to the ruin of one long past symbolized by the ancient house.