Cold Stories is a video installation in four parts that retraces the political history of mankind from the Cold War era up until the Global Warming period, thus giving a new critical point of view of the period’s history.
Dias & Riedweg chose four historical figures whose politics and actions directly and/or indirectly contributed to the phenomena of Global Warming in which we live today: Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Kroutchtchev.
Cold Stories is structured in four projections contained and diffused out of 22 inch monitors placed in old steamer trunks and suitcases. Each projection shows the marionnette being manipulated by the brazilian marionnettist Marco Nogueira, imitating the character it portrays, At the same time, segments of commercials and political propaganda of the Cold war period found in internet archives are diffused in soap like bubbles that overlap the marionnette act.
The sound manipulations used by Dias & Riedweg in their videos, transform fragments of political speeches in a cacophonic repetition mixed with electronic music, turning these into insane mantras. Behind the steamer trunks are projected archival images of memorable historical episodes of the period contained in « hallucigenous colored soap bubbles »
By way of this installation certain of the most important moments of our history come from a marionnette and grow to cover the screen, explode and disappear. The metaphorical use of soap bubbles and the use of marionnettes give us the perception to the extent in which key historical events were ephemeral, manipulated and manipulators.