Moser & Schwinger's 'Affection riposte' Blurs Spectator Roles at Saint-Gervais

The exhibition 'Affection riposte' by Frédéric Moser and Philippe Schwinger at Centre pour l'image contemporaine Saint-Gervais in Geneva (August 30, 2001 – January 14, 2001) questions the spectator's place through a video installation set in a 1970s two-star hotel room. Co-produced by the Comédie de Genève, the work presents a looped projection of a domestic quarrel among three people, friends, and children, blurring boundaries between set and exhibition space. The video shifts perspectives: a wide shot reveals empty seats before a stage, suggesting a boulevard play; another shows backstage, hinting at a documentary; close-ups of actress Brigitte Raoul evoke emotion, undermining the documentary hypothesis. Moser & Schwinger deliberately confuse amateur and professional performance, aiming to erode categories of the spectacle industry through affective overflow. The work shares with Pierre Huyghe's 'The Third Memory' a concern for defining projection spaces and dismantling spectacle mechanisms, but unlike Huyghe's reference to Sidney Lumet's 'Dog Day Afternoon', Moser & Schwinger reconstruct a scene from John Cassavetes' 'Opening Night' not as a remake but to destabilize the viewer.