Quoting Contemporariness, Universal Cube, Leipzig, 1.5.-31.5.2009

Photo: Matej Kosir

This photo was taken at the exhibition Quoting Contemporariness in Universal Cube, Halle 14, Spinnerei Leipzig.

Scanner and Pendulum are ideological mechanisms. I took the term »ideological mechanism« word for word, literally, and made an apparatus that produces an illusion with a dematerialized image, reduced to a light field. Machines that fabricate phantasms or fictions are unmasked.

The images shown by the two machines are »literal« as well. They are based on two stories written about mechanisms, one from Edgar Allan Poe (The Pit and the Pendulum, 1842) and the other from Franz Kafka (The Penal Colony, 1914). Pendulum constructs a photograph of harrow as a symbol of ideological apparatus that, as in Kafka's story, writes Laws into an individual's body and his subjectiveness. Our identity is always constructed. Scanner imprints the image of a pit (Poe), a black hole with roots.

In contrast to historical references – in a way Pendulum is like Duchamp's Rotorelief made with LED diodes – and kinetic art from the beginning and the mid-20th century, my machines show realistic images. However, because of the nature of LED diodes, which do not provide detailed clarity, the images also become abstract again. My kinetic objects thus produce and devour images at the same time.