dis-connected macha » emptiness

Extensions … (of media, images and space)

macha — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:37:53 +0000

During the last Threeplusone residency and exhibition that took place in Zennestraat 17 (Brussels) this late summer, I presented an installation mixing flickering light and painting projection with the help of Arduino , Processing and a small LDR.

The aim of the residency was to create new site-specific works, directly inspired from this old laboratory, and connected with the idea of “extension”, coming from certain questions that we wanted to raise, such as: How to extend a media with another?, How to extend an image into a space?, How to extend a space into a media?

Starting from that, I chose one of the rooms available in Zennestraat 17: the one completely painted in black during the last exhibition, except for a white frame. This room was especially made to welcome a projection… and suited to one of the works I wanted to achieve: a hybrid installation where outside light interfere with the inner lights of the image. A complete auto-sufficient system that the public could only look at and not interact with.

From this process, results an empirical dialog between two flickering phenomenons, a tensed experience with a constantly appearing/disappearing image, touching nearly the state of film, but remaining always a still, questioning ourselves on the reality of the space, the image and the experience that we are living.

A video documentation of the installation will come soon but here you can already find some pictures…

Anywhere reloaded :: recent works

macha — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:22:09 +0000

Here are some pictures of recent works in progress (they still need to be finished after being mounted on board).

After exploring and revealing specific qualities of the non-place self (heterogeneity, reflective surfaces, geometricity) by hollowing out the space of its recognizable elements, I try now to go deeper in the merge of surfaces. I’d like to lead the image to a certain state of in-between, between something recognizable and something where all directions would have been erasing.

Empty places and times

macha — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:10:13 +0000

Chris Marker, La Jetée, 1962

Nicolas Moulin, Vider Paris, 2001

portefolio

Anywhere Reloaded :: post 03

macha — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:01:14 +0000

Anywhere reloaded #04, painting on paper, 150×120cm, 2007

I’ve now a good series of painting material, but as an image is never experienced as a real situation and finally is only a strong personal interpretation of a space, I plan to prepare an intervention in it. I don’t know if I’ll get the authorisations for doing this at North Station Brussels, which belongs to SNCB, but it could actually be in any non-space. I need at least few equipment and access to electricity.

My idea is to fictionalise the space by use of lights and a certain “mise en scene” in order to allows individuals to perceive it differently. Once the gap created, the viewer becomes actor of the emptiness. He has to fill the time-space offered to him. This concept join what I developed with the “dis-connected project” where the emptiness available in the “helmets” allowed the users to dis-connect from their environment.

Again the ability of the spectator to experience something is only up to him. His openness to perception could create nothing or everything. But it brings me other questions, is it the person who sublimates the real or is it the real that sublimates his perception of appearances? It leads me to the notion of being “inhabit” (in french we say that an object or anything non human can be “habité”), it means that spaces could be alive and inhabit by their own soul. It could be natural, as mountains, or artificial spaces, as buildings, non-spaces.

In this research, I have noticed that it’s not necessarily me who is attracted by these spaces, but I have sometimes the impression that they call me, that they have their things to say to whom could be able to stop the flow and listen to them. Then, would those spaces be kind of monolith, making connections between the visible and the invisible? Between the surface where we walk and another level of reality?

Therefore the project of an intervention becomes more relevant. The paintings create an experience of a image, a vision of this concept of the monolith but would it be possible to make it experienced in real? Or would it remains a fantasy?

Some interesting books or articles:

O Altitudo!: An Interview with Robert Macfarlane, Brian Dillon, in Cabinet Magazine, The Mountains issue, 2007
Images, Perception and Stereotypes, Alia Rayyan, February 2006

Non-Lieux, introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité, Marc Augé, Seuil, 1992