For his exhibition Vous êtes chez moi! / Sie sind bei mir! in the FRAC Alsace in Sélestat in 2005, Eric Hattan transformed the space into a ghost town. Crates from the collection’s art storeroom served with or without contents as building material for a deserted settlement. Nobody is there anymore; only the artist’s videos show traces of human existence in this parcours—scarecrows, a plastic bag flapping in the wind, an abandoned sheep that drags its own pelt behind it.

Maja Naef and Ralph Ubl write in their essay, “Hattan’s topography includes marginal and transitional zones: condemned buildings, empty lots, ruins, abandoned and forgotten objects, the remnants of the world.” In Vous êtes chez moi! Eric Hattan turns his attention to what has been given up, left behind, to remains not (yet) disposed of. His attention is constantly on the move, constantly roaming, and these remnants are granted one last remnant of attention that acknowledges their fleetingness.

Eric Hattan: Niemand ist mehr da continues the exposition, transports it from it’s own space into the outside world. Hattan roams through forgotten places and reveals the neighborly relationships between inside and outside, between the hidden and the tangible, between package and picture, crate and art. In the video, Hattan uses his sense of topography to look at his exhibition. Like the crates in the exhibition, this book becomes a container, the DVD becomes part of the installation, the exhibition space an abandoned place, a ghost town. Art is a relic, the people have moved on.

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