REHABBen Laloua / Didier Pascal
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Ben Laloua / Didier Pascal's REHAB project consists of an exhibition, a publication and an outdoor poster campaign in Amsterdam. All these components show us afterimages of certain media moments which have slipped from memory. The images are processed into new forms. They have retained their self-referential seductiveness, but the original economic motive has disappeared.
The Chinese reporter returns in one of the posters.
Another one refers to Jade Goody, formerly a participant in the British version of Big Brother, who was accused of racism against a fellow contestant of Indian background. Because this happened precisely when Gordon Brown, then the British Foreign Secretary, was on a working visit to India, the 'issue' blew up into a diplomatic brouhaha. This is only one example of the almost untraceable path by which serious news and the pseudo-event, entertainment and politics can become one inextricable tangle. Ultimately Jade had to issue an abject apology, without any direct financial profit as a result at the time ("Jade was not paid for this interview"), but of course the whole episode took her one rung higher on the ladder of celebrity.
The third poster deals with one of the most popular forms of recreation in our society at the moment, Sudoku. A couple of years ago no one had even heard of it, now we can't imagine life without it. On this poster the puzzle melts together with an image of New Orleans just after hurricane Katrina.
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