video-installatie. Video, U-matic, kleur, klank, 2 min

"In the video installation Oratorio for one video player and eight monitors Frank Theys shows the relation image/supporter in its essence and questions the status of the contemporary artist.
On eight monitors, facing each other, the same close-up of a man is seen singing the famous supporters song “You ‘ll never walk alone”. The video tape is taken out of its cassette making a round tour in front of the monitors, pended on a circle of tripods. The image supports itself and its own support continuously. It is an oratorio that sings the praises of the unbreakable relation between the image and its support and that puts the traditional relation image/support into question.
An other title of this work could have been ‘emanation’. The emanation or corpuscular theory, that claims that all things, without discontinuity in its evolution, arise from the highest principle, is visualized here in an extreme way. Frank Theys brings a closed circuit wherein the image observes its own intestines/support. A continuous repetition of sound and image, a continuous connection between image and support makes a full circle that excludes all creativity, just like in the corpuscular theory. Is the artist someone who is capable to act creative or does he need to be represented as a godlike figure that observes its own intestines?”

Nathalie Monteyne, catalogue De gemartelde Tijd, 1995