The showcase is a format, a set of scripts running that displays a finished image rendered in hidden line mode. It is presented in a virtual space set to "world", and it represents a synthetic character generated as a staging of different links between otherwise separate worlds, (hard) drives, events, sceneries. Within this operating system, the electrical cable passes along the unstable outlines of energy forms produced by an array of calculations and algorithms. It embodies the path of a cursor guiding through the logic of this "world" setting, where a range of hybrid logics, structures and links converge as new subjects and subjectivities. Along its passage shared between unknown and familiar gestures, the line becomes an interface, emulating the secure logic of a camera, but whose principles and operating rules are no longer harnessed to gravity, but to calculations in a space of rendered proposals. In this spatial configuration, orientation is sensed like a script unfolding along the route in the format of establishing shots, "scenic views" of the traces left by the camera. Routed between real and virtual characters, subjectivity is always at the verge, a rendered representation set in between the familiar and the uncanny.
showcase, cables, video projector, video, color guide system, posters
2004 Kunsthalle Bern / showcase, cables, slide projector w. slide, color guide system
Coming Attraction: On Display / Ornament
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| On Display: Ornament/ Installation Views, Fondaçio Miró , Barcelona 2002 | ||||
Showcase
The showcase is not a container of objects, but a generator of vision. An ornamental transmission takes place that orients along the turns and tangles of an electrical cable to dissolve into the ornament with which a piece of furniture (a fake Chippendale leg) is adorned. An actual body appears that is subjected to the economies of the physiological as well as the psychological, a world half body, half mind, and based on a tenuous system of circulation and exchange. The head connects to the body through the twisting and bending of an electrical cable which then connects to the leg: a fetish recuperating the real as a unity that has been disassembled, a part of an object replacing the lost one in vain. While the cable carries electrical currents, the leg is charged with the energy of the symbolic. It is the only thing that entirely rests on the ground inside of this spatial collage, and it grounds that which again generates spaces. The real thus is communicated through the syntax of a language of objects, and is condensed into supplementary interfaces (a leg, a case) that is there not to show and display, but to expose: to make the real visible through rendering the processes of transmission and communication woven within.
At the same time, the cable suggests the path of the virtual camera, as if the movement of this invisible eye had become a spatial gesture that leaves a trace in the world. In the film, the camera path is charged with the energy of the visual. In the showcase as parallel universe to the film - a different form of diegesis - the cable is charged with electricity. Thus, projection and space become a synthetic character: a spatial collage consisting of visible and invisible ornaments, of generative and generated traces. The eye follows the path of the cable as it follows the path of the camera, both evolving as ornaments within closed, though distinct diegetic containers. The emptiness of the case actualizes the space as well as the real as constructions to always be analysed anew.
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| On Display: Ornament/ installation views, Kunsthalle Bern, 2004 | ||||
Scripts
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| Digital model of the fake chippendale leg on display | |
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| Digital models of ornamental elements of the leg |
Cables
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The showcase displays a prolonged instance seized from within the flux
of currents and signals, a tenuous point in time only momentarily
stabilized into a shape that is always in danger of exceeding itself.
Through the case passes the line of a cable, it is shielding a reminder
of the dynamic at work within, as signals pass to transmit onto network
connections: assailable signs always at the verge of short circuit.
Through the case passes the line of a cable, it is shielding a
reminder of the dynamic at work within, as signals pass to transmit
onto network connections: assailable signs always at the verge of short
circuit. A showcase offers a reliable space as long as it operates in a
closed world of static objects and fixed meanings. But here, the line
of the cable moves between and along the way. It weaves the fabric of the real as well as it signals a distinct
conversion of worlds: from object to syntax, container to language,
commodification to communication.
Signals and Stories
The showcase reflects the space of exchange between subject and object; along the dynamic line shared between two processes of conversion that always leave remainders behind. Inside, a cable carrying electrical currents tentatively traces something no longer there, but still embedded within: the signal of an inscription charged with the energy of the symbolic. The showcase is grounded in a world of room objects deemed to have special value and function within the conventions of the exhibition space, where even the disembodied experience of watching a film is transformable into the language of object commodity. The line of a cable traces a search pattern out amongst the gaps left between incomplete story lines in the imaginary. It routes through symbolic objects as means of recuperating the real, channeling the energy between projection and fetish in a universe of disassemblage, where a tale of unity is transferred to the mystery of appearances and firmly grounded on substitute objects.
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| On Display: Ornament/ installation views, Kunsthalle Bern, 2004 | ||
A showcase operates as a repository of objects to be contemplated, a look ascribed to values, all focused through an ideology with an ideal functional unity set between object and framework. This showcase is an inversion, an event displaying its principles inside out with rules rewound to a "container Degree Zero", to provide a blank space that dissolves the necessity of object and subject, display and frame, into language.
If solid outlines once secured the display of values, now all is folded together inseparably and new guidelines are drawn out that pass along the transgressive articulations of an ornament. Its patterns represent other methodological movements and contemporary narratives. It displays patterns of information that cue the current spatiality, where observation is set on trial display, and the privileged gaze is now left to follow a cable fee into the memory of a camera figuring through digital space, the clues left of mysterious passages underway by subjectivities unfolding and transforming.
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