Here a gentle touch is enough to get the magic words to reveal their secrets. Fantasies accompanied by celestial sounds willingly wander from the edge of the screen to the centre, apparitions appear on the walls. [...]

No one can say how it all started, whether with objects, with ideas or with the thought of linking touch screen, computer and high-tech projectors together. Anyway, Fred Fröhlich now has a cardboard box filled with plastic objects in his flat, a strange collection similar to the contents of a kitchen drawer, very ordinary things that have been collected from toy shops, stationery shops, sex shops and supermarkets. [...]

Art is a piece of machinery that generates meaning. And this is a thesis on art. This is a serious topic.

It's about the power of social models and their links with products; it's about how advertising works; it's about consumption and therefore about the fabric that holds this very society together. Its implementation is on the funny side. On the face of it, it's game show aesthetics. Fred Fröhlich's interactive slide projection show is a cool, calculating game that takes advantage of the viewer's curiosity in order to develop a complex metaphor of the consumer culture. [...]

We voluntarily follow Fred's instructions, just as the demand side usually follows the supply side. With the help of advertising, any product can become a fetish, an icon [...].«

Tim Sommer: Placebo,
in Vitale Module,
Dresden/Amsterdam 1997

Installation slides
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