His approach aims at the deepest psychological layers of man, those interwoven with the daily conduct of his life […]. In order to accomplish this, Gerz tries to cause the greatest possible disorientation, or an obvious absence of solutions, in his environments and performances.

Herbert Molderings 1984

The notions of culture and life, as they are conveyed in his work, might be understood as a form of the "essential dualism" characteristic of the western (humanist) tradition of thinking, in which paired notions such as culture/nature, subject/object, spirit/matter, mind/body, and self/other, are brought in relations of antagonism or exclusion (or even extermination). Gerz, however, does not perpetuate the image of them as the "two" that should become "one", he deconstructs the opposition by introducing a "third" which destabilises the recognisable and easily manipulated "two".

Bojana Pejic 1995

So you would have to master both languages to realize that the artists were uttering monologues, and understand what they were talking about. In underscoring the limit of language as a communication tool, this piece is also a criticism of the video media. “I had to find my way through it (the media), because my work in general always has to do with the non-reality of the communication produced by the technological media. What probably fascinated me the most was the possibility of using the medium in a specific way by showing how it doesn’t work […], by using it for purposes other than those planned". (Jochen Gerz, interview with Rosa Krapp, 1974)

Bénédicte le Pimpec, Isaline Vuille 2018