Sanela Jahic

What happens next...HOLOGRAPHY

2011-12-30T14:01:00.000-08:00

Three starting points:

1. ~~Imaginarium~~. "Refers to a place devoted to the imagination. There are various types of imaginariums, centers largely dedicated to stimulating and cultivating the imagination, towards scientific, artistic, philosophical, or spiritual ends." ⁅1⁆

2. ~~Holography~~. "Viewing a hologram is like peering through a portal into a nonexistent three dimensional world of unbelievable realism. Holography is the first truly 3-D image-making process, since it recreates what light waves actually do after reflecting from a real object." How to push this technique further? "Rodieck demonstrates that the mathematical equations describing the holographic process match what the brain does with information... The brain is a hologram. The mind is a holographic plate." ⁅The Holography Handbook⁆

3. ~~Montage~~. "When two images encounter each other, the third image arises. The other way of seeing, perceiving." ⁅Jean-Luc Godard⁆

Reading material

Drawing in the Age of Electronic Expressions, LEAP, Berlin, 28.01. - 05.02.2012

2011-12-29T13:18:00.000-08:00

Sanela Jahić: Cerebral Values of Mechanic Beauty, text by Ida Hiršenfelder

2011-12-01T13:50:00.000-08:00

Text by Ida Hiršenfelder, published in Passengers from the Absolute to the Relative (Publication Studio):

Sanela Jahić
Cerebral Values of Mechanic Beauty

─ »With the unyielding and rigid mechanic mind-set that is ill-suited for modern fluidity, I am an emotional and cognitive dogmatist plagued by closed-heartedness and closed-mindedness.« (Sanela Jahić: Guide to perfectionism, in Excerpts on Fire Painting, http://sanelajahic.blogspot.com/)

In the following passage I would like to think about some of the aspects of the intrinsic value in art works by a young yet prolific and intellectually rigorous artist Sanela Jahić. It would be wise to start with short descriptions to use as a guide in further reading in which I will attempt to show some of the possible entry points to the interpretation of her complex constructions. The short descriptions are going to be comprised mainly of technical details, functionalities, reference points and direct narratives, strongly relying on the texts published on the artist's blog and conversations at her studio. Her works are purposefully conceptualized to appear as though they are offering “a potentially infinite plurality of interpretations, that are open in their meaning, and do not impose on the spectator any specific ideology, or theory, or faith.” If we are to understand this quote that the artist takes from Groys correctly, this can be sometimes a bit misleading for it is easy to get carried away when contemplating her usage of utterly universal elements like fire, mirrors, masks, reflections, holes and caves, holographic images and visual illusions. These building blocs are as “memes” as parts of the collective unconscious, saturating every fiber of human culture that the artist reinterprets by leaning on numerous references ranging from mythology, religious iconography, films, fine art history, classic literature or politics; anything that would stimulate her cerebral endeavors. In the following list Dogma II, Scanner III & Pendulum and Fire Painting are the milestones presenting the most important aspects of her work.

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Dogma II (2004-2005) is exhibited in a dark space, the image only illuminated by an optical reader. The scanner with neon light gradually unveils the mystical picture concealed in the dark. It shows two interlaced images, reflecting the artist's experience of growing up in bipolar cultural background of a rather conservative small Catholic town in a Muslim family. The machine presents the images as an illusion or a hologram. The artist attempts to uncover and demystify the two polarities and to do away with religious beliefs all together. The front surface is framed at both ends – above and bellow – by the image of raised hands at an Islamic prayer. The mid-image is a found footage of the devil's hands peeling an egg taken from a film Angel Heart (1987) quoting: “You know, some religions think that the egg is the symbol of the soul.”1 The brain behind the surface is a rigorous mathematical logical construction of the machine, reined by an algorithmic process. Another quote from the film comes in handy:“They say there's just enough religion in the world to make men hate one another but not enough to make them love.”2 Dogma II was first exhibited at Illusions from the Remotest Times.

Roots and Rupture (2007-2008) was an intimate performance and installation in the wild. The artist came across a fallen beech tree crossing her path when strolling in the forest. She searched for the hole where the tree had been unrooted. It had appeared like a painful wound in the soil. She has found analogy between the tree and the attempts to painfully rid oneself of the roots of the tradition. She has deepened the hole for her body to entirely fit into it and covered herself with the roots. The process lasted for three months. Latter, one of the images from this piece became the carrier image for Scanner III.

Scanner III (2005-2008) is a mechanic installation. An abrupt vertical movement sets in motion a horizontal set of LED diodes that are programmed to emulate a photographic matrix in time. With the help of a Slovenian company for electronics and software development she calculated the space-time continuum. The color of each LED diode would change according to the distance it makes in relation to the speed of the moving of the scanner and to the color relation in the matrix of the carrier image. The picture from Roots and Rupture performance appears in a flash like a holographic or a de-materialized image. It projects the hole in the ground intertwined by tree roots indicating a space where a tree was unrooted. The installation goes hand in hand with Pendulum (2007-2008) that is based on the same key principles producing an illusion of the image as well as making a contemporary interpretation of kinetic art sculpture – specifically the later refers to Duchamp's Rotorelief. Both machines are constructed using two literary references: the pitch black pit in Scanner resembles the end of Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum (1842). The beginning of that story is portrayed in the movement of Pendulum swaying from side to side, while the image appears not by swaying but by powerful circular rotation of LED diodes. Needless to say, the algorithm for calculating the distance in relation to speed in a circular movement is even more complex than the one where the movement is vertical. The image is simultaneously appearing and disappearing. It is likewise based on a literary reference interpreting the brutal machine in Franz Kafka's The Penal Colony (1914). It shows the artist's back scared with a harrow in the same way as The Officer in The Penal Colony inscribes the laws into the bodies of The Condemned, as society inscribes its rules onto our identities. A detailed interpretation of the two mechanisms can be found in the text In Medias res.

Two Faced Mirror (2007-) is a mechanic object. A mirror is framed in a gold baroquesque ornament equipped with a sensor and back-side mechanism, which would slightly break the angle of the mirror when the observer approached it to make the reflection disappear. At first, this is an eerie encounter, reminiscent of a popularized film iconography of soulless monsters trading humanity for eternal life. One could draw analogies between baroque ornament and contemporary kitsch. Perhaps recognize the dispersed subject in pop culture who is adhered to the repression of design or cosmetic and surgical industry, where form has completely devoured any need for content or intellectual reflection and resulted in producing idiotic slogans like Franco Moschino's Ceci n'est pas une boutique. But a more precise reading of the piece would imply to Gilles Deleuze's The Fold (1988) where he developed Leibniz's baroque philosophy and identifies it as the key concept to understand contemporary science and art. The contemporary world is comprised of folds that contract space, movement, and time into limitless patterns that are constantly in the process of becoming. So is the contemporary subject, signified by multitude of identities in motion.

Mask (2008-2010) is a series of three mirror masks inspired by Bauhaus theater and dance director Oskar Schlemmer. It is a continuation in the artist's exploration of the fold. The mask is built to protect the artist from the intrusive fragmentation of the contemporary subject. It is the direct reflection of the world without any signification of the person wearing it. Mask is allowing her a complete fluidity, not burdened either by age, beauty, social status, gender, race, religious belief or any other signifier.

Fire Painting (2010) is a cybernetic construction. It is composed of a set of 16 pumps creating pressure and pushing a lavish green color kerosene oil mixture through the nozzles when the valves are released. The kerosene is sparked to combustion creating a formidable brilliant flame. The combustion is controlled by subtle movements of the sensor glove worn by the artist/participant/viewer. One is literary playing with fire. The idea is built on a paradox of tactile handling of this primal element, using it as color on a canvas like an action painter. The participant controls the image yet it constantly alludes him or her. Fire is the ultimate intangible and unstable light-based medium, therefore any digital or electronic image can be emulated in its light (screens, projectors, televisions). In fact, the 4x4 nozzles function like 16 pixels image. Tinny gestures with the glove trigger forceful and unpredictable changes mesmerizing one to a stand still and bringing one to a complete rapture. Again the artist strives to capture the gaze, to catch the time of the moment. Furthermore, the entire construction is supported by a completely translucent “bodiless” containers custom made out of glass. Jahić radicalizes the painting much further from a simple translation of time-based art into an analogue medium. She eliminates the carrier of the image entirely. The only carrier is the mathematical algorithm that translates movements of the sensors into opening of the valves causing combustion. She herself explains it as an interest in the possibilities of formalist questions of modernism in contemporary art; that of the vibration of the color and that of the frame of the painting, only that she adopts a much more mystical turn using fire that is visually intoxicating and hallucinatory. There is no more frame, no more edge, just endless folds of infinite becoming of the image.

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1. Aesthetic Perfection

“The machines for cynics and perfectionists” – as Sanela Jahić calls them – perpetuate the rigor of her obsessive endeavor to be precise in the way she treats an idea in visual and mechanic aesthetics. The machines, the objects constitute a seemingly impossible image. They are based on paradoxes and the work of Sisyphus, bringing forward a strong conviction that the intelligence of the machines is defined solely by formalist aesthetics and impeccable performance. These immaculate devices defy the postulates of aesthetic solutions of the DIY principles which are supposed to display the crude unsophisticated manner in which it is built. Her mechanisms are characterized by a relation of the membrane usually represented in an illusory holographic light image (as in Scanner III, Pendulum, Fire Painting, Knitting Machine), and the intricate logic that is governed by the pure mathematics of the mechanic functions and the program language. The obvious difference of the visible membrane and the hidden core is not a duality but an individual form of life much like a cybernetic organism. Her constructions are living entities that fold and unwrap in numerous images created on the membrane of the eye. One cannot differentiate the visible membrane “the outside” from the hidden structure “the inside” for they both play its own accord, as Deluze puts it: “The simplest way of stating the point is by saying that to unfold is to increase, to grow; whereas to fold is to diminish, to reduce, to withdraw into the recesses of a world. Yet a simple metric change would not account for the difference between the organic and the inorganic, the machine and its motive force. It would fail to show that movement does not simply go from one greater or smaller part to another, but from fold to fold. When a part of a machine is still a machine, the smaller unit is not the same as the whole.”3

Each cultural reference and each string of thought that Jahić knits into the fabric of an individual piece would produce a set of folds that make the work an ever expanding plane of associations and interpretations. Using elements like fire in the Fire Painting produce all the related meanings symbolizing purification, destruction, life, illusion and so forth. The Mechanical Book would like wise be connected to anything related to history, memory, language, meaning, linearity. The Mask would be interpreted as a reverse mirror stage in psychology, a critique of the ideals of the beauty in contemporary society or a critique of the social identities all together. The works are all of these things and neither of them, for they are constantly changing the meaning depending entirely on the observer. In this aspect the simplicity of form and errorless functionality is necessary to enable a complexity of the meaning. For Jahić an ornament remains a crime, because it obscures the pure functionalities of the piece. She is inclined to demand an impeccable perfection without the “human” factor. That is why she would often label them as Utopian, for such an endeavor is bound to be disappointing, yet she never gives up. Like Prometheus she is stealing the fire from the gods (idealism – the membrane) and gives it to humans (realism – the mechanism). Furthermore, it is imperative that the machines cannot be entirely flawless, for they indicate an impossibility of a complete rapture, for only pure logic is entirely sure of oneself. The artist's references to Utopian tradition is perhaps best recognized in her usage of avant-guard imagery of the Bauhaus (Oscar Schlemmer's mask) or kinetic art (Duchamp's Rotorelief). It is of some importance that she had concluded her masters thesis in Weimar where the sounds of Bauhaus school still resonates in the Academy hallways.

2. A Glitch in Time
The focal point and the prevailing material for Sanela Jahić's obsessive works is a strong sensation there is something wrong with our perception of space, or time, or both. But the crucial point of the perception of reality are not space-time, but speed. Light that appears in virtually all of her works is a form of electromagnetism that travels with speed of approximately 300 million kilometers per second with a small delay. Not that she would necessary utilize her art to understand physical laws, she is only attempting to interpret the given reality or her profound doubt into its objective existence. An important aspect of her numerous works is “time dilation” – a term from the theory of relativity. It states that the faster the object travels the slower the time would pass and if it would travel with the speed of light, time would come to a deadlock all together. Sanela Jahić shows the tendency to speed up her mechanic objects and capture the gaze to an almost mystical standstill. One of her methods would be the undertaking of strenuous and enduring processes of production, another would be the implementation of most absurd materials or ideas. This of course depends on the immediate reception of the work, therefore any attempt to capture it into a document is to some extend a failed experiment.

Most of these works are also based on a photographic image that enhances the idea of a non-linear perception of time. By a multitude of media translations and repetitive sequences or loops of the image she induces the internal dialectics of the work and the image that always bears the ambiguous or connotative complexes of symbols. She explores how to activate an image into movement that would challenge the frequency of the eye which is otherwise highly accustomed the perceiving digital light emission. How would the picture move without being enslaved to the known formats? “The time reconstructed by scanning is an eternal recurrence of the same process. Simultaneously, however, one's gaze also produces significant relationships between elements of the image. It can return again and again to a specific element of the image and elevate it to the level of a carrier of the image's significance... The space reconstructed by scanning is the space of mutual significance. This space and time peculiar to the image is none other than the world of magic, a world in which everything is repeated and in which everything participates in a significant context.”6

Thus time, memory and history are consequences of technology, the relation between reproduction and mimesis, images and history, remembering and forgetting, allegory and mourning, and visual and linguistic representation. If we are to set the beginning of history at the time of the beginning of writing, we now find ourselves again at the point where the linearity is dispersed. We are in a perfect condition to have a complete historic amnesia. “The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again... For it is an irretrievable image of the past that threatens to disappear with every present that does not recognize itself as intended in it.”4 All the works to some extend deal with the function of language and ideologies some a bit more then others like Dogma II, Pendulum, Speaking Void or Mechanical Book. For the later, it is perhaps worth to note that the book does not so much attempt to criticize the gradual pervasion of the digital book, reading in a hyper text environment, and the death of hard copies, but the death of content, of the ideas being lost or intentionally forgotten.

3. The Sounds of Aggression

Aesthetic perfection of artistic machines constructed by Sanela Jahić in close cooperation with her partner Andrej Primožič represent a Utopian paradox, but there is another part of them that indicates a Dystopic view of the technological achievements. The horizon of the work is “tuned to a dead channel”5. The rhythm of her work is often gloomy and disturbing as though she is writing science fiction of the current times. The machines are cold and discomforting i.e. Mask. Some of these organisms are specifically violent and arbitrary. They react according to their own design and are not to be toyed with. This is true for Dogma II and even more for Scanner III and Pendulum which are in fact switched on by the visitor, but apart from that the visitor would have no control over their perpetual and malevolent movements. Scanner III moving swiftly cutting brutally through the air like a guillotine and Pendulum swinging and rotating endlessly, swishing by like the horror of Poe's story. There is another point to this violent behavior of the machines that becomes very evident in The Fire Painting, The Knitting Machine and The Mechanical Book – the importance of sound and rhythm produced by the mechanism. Most subtly it is manifested in The Fire Painting where an experienced painter like the artist herself makes a very carefully structures experimental sound composition produced by the subtle noise of combustion and opening of the nozzles. An inexperienced painter – a random visitor – usually does quite poorly in that respect.

The aggression and the noise of the machine implies also a political agenda that is present as a fiber in all the works but is never quite outspoken. Feminist and political critique is latently implied but never a starting aspect of the utterance. For the artist the epistemological question of the perception and her interest in the pure form of art always stands as the initial point of interest. All other interpretations are second to this. Nevertheless, the initial idea for the Fire Painting was to be performed by politicians to observe what sort of devastation their smallest movements and actions cause. This was quite a humorous expression of the artist's doubt of the benevolence of “democratic” system. On the other hand, she shows a lot of interests into the ideas of socialism, social sensitivity and egalitarianism. In hacking images and ideologies in Dogma II, Knitting Machine and Mechanical Book she takes in account the conclusion of French critical film theory that the ruling ideology is not only present in the technical image produced via apparatuses, but is installed in the very device – into the camera. Jahić moves her Fire Painting performance outside of the gallery not only to attract various audiences but also to loose the frame of the gallery setting entirely. First, she erases the brim of the picture. Then, gets rid of institutional carrier of art all together.

Likewise, her atheist position can be associated with most of her work. Stating, that religious believes are for the weak, for the past, and a nuisance inhibiting the future of humanity. For the Future is the Machine, strict and structured. Flawless. The hope for the future is drawn from the Utopian dream of a scientific future, rather the angst for the machine controlled society. In this deliberation it is possible to note another cause that had led her to pursue a highly polished and superb aesthetics. Each of her attempts at a perfection expresses deep respect for the technical achievements of the civilization. She is not discriminatory of any of these efforts, but rather equally values computers, machines or the development of fabricated materials like glass. In the piece Mask one tracks a long history of reflections dating far back to the first polished copper mirror 4000 BC in Mesopotamia, to the invention of glass mirrors, to its demise in the gloom of the medieval castration of Narcissus, to the renaissance painters like Velasquez or van Eyck looking for their own image in the back of their commissioned portraits, becoming aware of their “artistic genius”. Jahić subverts this idea in reflecting the entire space making only herself disappear.

It is perhaps not entirely insignificant that the mirror has been attribute to the vanity of a woman. The artist – being a women herself – does not overtly deal with women issues, but this is nevertheless strongly present in her work. Women portrayed with a mirror in fine arts were intended for the male gaze while simultaneously being morally judged (depictions of Venus with the Mirror by renaissance artist like Rubens, Titian, or Velasquez). The eerie Mask completely subverts the notions attributed to the view of oneself. The Mask is non-genderdized, ageless, classless, raceless, religiousless, stripped of any social signifier. If feminism is a project of self-reflection and asserting one's own position in the world, what happens when it becomes a total reflection of the world? The Mask in totemic rituals reveals the force of a uniform subjectivity, that is possible only in the symbolic order and not on the level of everyday life. In Mask the subjectivity becomes an endless fold and simultaneously disappears. Same happens in the Two Faced Mirror. The intention of Jahić is to give an individual open possibilities rather then another set of signifiers.

– Text by Ida Hiršenfelder

References:
1 Parker, Alan: Angel Heart, 1987
2 Ibid.
3 Deluze, Gilles: Guba, Študentska založba, zbirka Koda, 2009
4 Flusser, Vilém: Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Reaktion Books, 2007
5 An expression used in Gibson, William: Neuromancer, 1984.
6 Lowy, Michael; Turner, Chris: Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin's "On the Concept of History, 2006

Pixxelpoint 2011, 12th International New Media Art Festival, Nova Gorica - Gorizia, 2.-9. December 2011

2011-11-25T04:00:00.001-08:00

Invitation:

Vabilo:

Link to the festival program

Link to the Pixxelpoint 2011 exhibition catalog

Photo by Sendi Mango / BridA

The link to my radio interview regarding the Pixxelpoint Award 2011, among other things (in Slovenian language): http://tvslo.si/predvajaj/likovni-odmevi/ava2.122889178/

SOCIOKINETIKUM, Galerija Ivana Groharja, Škofja Loka, 17.11.-11.12.2011

2011-11-14T06:00:00.001-08:00

Večji del umetniške produkcije Sanele Jahić, ki smo jo v zadnjih letih imeli priložnost spremljati na številnih ključnih slovenskih in mednarodnih prizoriščih sodobne umetnosti, že vseskozi nastaja v zelo zahtevnem območju konstruiranja zapletenih umetniških strojev in naprav. Njen, navidezno prevladujoč svet tehnoloških eksperimentov pa je vse prej kot le svet tehnologije »per se«. S svojimi stroji ima umetnica nek, skorajda Kafkovski odnos. Vizualno in konstrukcijsko delikatne naprave/objekte namreč Jahićeva že nekaj let razvija predvsem v sociološkem kontekstu pa tudi likovnem smislu raziskovanja pojma in pomena slike/slikovnega. V svet strojev, za katerega naj bi sicer veljal značaj nezmotljivosti in brezhibnosti, avtorica nenehno razvojno posega v smeri njegovega vedno novega izpopolnjevanja. S tem vanj vnaša element človeškega faktorja in s tem možnosti napake ter določeno krhkost pa tudi možnost popravkov ali regeneracije nekega stanja. Tehnologijo avtorica torej izrablja zlasti v smislu raziskave samih procesov, skozi katere se preko različnih medijev proizvajajo v naš svet fenomeni podobe/videza/pojavnosti, ki je prav tako krhka in v svojem bistvu spremenljiva. Na ta način avtorica posledično tematizira ključna vprašanja povezana s pojmi človekove percepcije kot take in slike kot mnogo bolj razširjenega vizualnega polja od zgolj »iluzionističnega okna« ali »ekrana«, ki ga je nekoč umetno uokvirilo klasično slikarstvo. A pri tem se Jahićeva ne odreka (klasičnim) slikarskim vprašanjem, mnogim prav s tem ostaja zavezana, le da se jim v iskanju in nenehnem prespraševanju avtentične narave slike skuša približati iz drugega zornega kota. Zato tudi sam koncept projektov temelji na istočasnem sprejemanju a hkrati tudi preseganju obstoječih omejitev. Torej na tistem produktivnem eklekticizmu, ki omogoča sveže/drugačne umetniške spoje.

Avtoričino strukturiranje projektov tako namenoma temelji na zavestnem kombiniranju zahtevnih in sofisticiranih sodobnih mehanizmov s preverjenimi starimi tehnologijami. To omogoča odkrito soočanje ne le prednosti ampak tudi slabosti različnih praks in rezultira v učinkovitih hibridnih rešitvah, vključno z njihovimi možnimi napakami. S tem seveda Jahićeva predvsem formalizira svojo osnovno vsebinsko vodilo, saj se v resnici preko vseh teh hi/low-tech strojev podaja v še mnogo bolj poduhovljene in poglobljene teme. V, danes oddaljen in tihi svet Platonove votline, kjer ne razdeluje več toliko likovna, kot že bolj filozofska vprašanja. V svet razmišljanja o razmerjih in nasprotjih, o izvornem v obsegu ideja-slika-iluzija-resnica-predmet-podoba. In ker so njena stališča zavestno tako polna tistih lastnih notranjih kontradikcij in nenehnih prespraševanj, bi lahko rekli, da so blizu celo konceptu t.i. Objektivne misli (Bachelard). Pa tudi umetniški produkciji zgodovinskih avantgard, ki so prav tako prakso ustvarjanja navideznih vizualnih nesporazumov že takrat prepoznale kot vitalno pogonsko gorivo umetnosti s specifično estetiko.

Jahićeva razmišlja v smeri kritične in pametne uporabe tehnologij in strojev v smislu poskusa preseganja ustaljenih konceptov, raziskovanja nerešljivega, širjenja našega obzorja, kot je vrednote take prakse poudarjal tudi Meštrovič (Nove tendence). Torej po načelu sprejemanja znanega z željo po kontinuiranem spreminjanju. Njena slika zato, tako kot nekoč Malevičeva, danes (ponovno/še vedno) ne želi biti tisto lažno okno in prevara, ki z iluzijo neke naslikane podobe prekrije pravo resnico o njej kot ploskovitem kosu platna, premazanem s pigmentom. Jahićeva želi »zgolj« po/kazati na njeno pravo resničnost, seveda na njej lasten in inovativen način. Svojo sliko namreč gradi iz, za klasično slikarstvo, nenavadnih elementov kot sta npr. ogenj in svetloba, ki pa ju razume kot možen alternativni slikarski material. Želi pokazati njihov videz, tak kot je v resnici -kot sta to reševala že Bauhaus in konstruktivisti in miselnosti katerih je tudi sama, zaradi širine in odprtega, vizionarskega pogleda v prihodnost tako privržena. Paradoks pri tem pa je, da je ta videz zelo težko uloviti, omejiti. Netaktilne, nestatične, pretočne oblike podob, zgrajene iz efektov svetlobnih sevanj, preko teh strojev, v zelo kratkih časovnih intervalih nenehno nastajajo in izginevajo. Njihov fluidni videz je nemogoče ujeti v nek stabilen okvir, ki bi nam omogočal fiksacijo pogleda na njen videz. Tu pa nastopi trik, saj s poskusom razkritja slike in njene materije, v vsej njeni avtentični »goloti«, pride prav do tistega paradoksalnega, nasprotnega efekta, ki ga avtorica pravzaprav v resnici išče in tudi uporabi kot osrednje gorivo svojih projektov. Ker gre za nematerialno sliko, ki je v svoji izginjajoči in spreminjajoči se naravi neoprijemljiva, le ta učinkuje prav tako iluzorno. A dejstvo, da nastala podoba ni mišljena kot prevara, ampak je resnična in avtentična ter ima celo svoje »napake«, celoto postavlja v čisto nasprotno luč od pogostega siceršnjega slikarskega iskanja laži.

Kontinuirano gibanje in spreminjanje vseh teh polzečih slik, ki jih proizvajajo avtoričini stroji in naprave, daje celoti še dodatno vlogo vizualnega dogodka. Razumemo ga lahko tudi kot sklepni avtoričin samo/ironični komentar, ki pokaže, kako dvoumne in relativne pomene pravzaprav nosi vsakršna ideja slike kot take; tako v kontekstu terminološkega konteksta besede kot v simbolnem kontekstu obravnavanja podobe. Eksplicitna prisotnost konstrukcije stroja kot nosilca in okvirja iz/preko/v/na katera se pretakajo slike oziroma njene substance, nakazuje prav to relativnost. Bodisi, da gre za avtoričino Ognjeno sliko, za Sekalce, za Skener, za Masko, za Mehanična knjigo ali druge, ki bi jim po Groysu lahko rekli celo »paradoks-objekti«, Jahićeva v njih nadgrajuje stare resnice. V nenehni veri v smisel sprememb išče nove, saj ve, da ne obstaja le ena sama. V kontekstu razstave, ki je zasnovana kot poskus prereza avtoričinega dosedanjega ustvarjanja, se slednje tako lahko končno pokaže tudi kot povezovalna, večplastna zgodba vseh njenih projektov, hkrati pa njen Platonistični odnos do sveta prav na ta način pride še posebej do izraza.

BARBARA STERLE VURNIK

Dizajn: Tina Brezovnik

V sodelovanju s Stefanom Doepnerjem: Mehanična knjiga // In collaboration with Stefan Doepner: Mechanical Book, Galerija Kapelica, 25.10. - 15.11.2011

2011-10-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

SANELA JAHIĆ IN STEFAN DOEPNER: 'Mehanična knjiga'

Galerija Metropolis, Kersnikova 6, Ljubljana

Otvoritev: torek, 25. oktobra 2011, ob 21.00 uri

'Mehanična knjiga' je sistem plastičnih cilindrov, ki se posamično dvigajo in spuščajo na podlagi matrice elektromagnetov, ki je pozicionirana pod tuljavami cilindrov. Ko se tipke Mehanične knjige premikajo navzgor in navzdol, njihove kombinacije tvorijo posamezne črke, zaporedje teh besede in niz zadnjih stavke. V knjigo umeščena kinetična, mehanična dimenzija narekuje ritem branja. Do kod lahko posameznik sledi določenemu načinu prikazovanja in razbiranja besed, izpisovanja in brisanja informacij, vsebine? Koliko se ob tem ohrani v spominu? Ker je izpis besed oz. informacij vključen v proces avtomatizacije, se lahko zgodi, da se branje knjige ujame v neskončno zanko ponavljanj. "Kot vsak stroj tudi 'Mehanična knjiga' včasih stori (ne)namerno napako in vsebina se spremeni..." (1) Morda je vanjo načrtno vgrajen 'defekt' kot podrejen faktor. Knjiga je spremenljiv objekt, konstruiran aparat.

(1) Polona Balantič: 'Podvojen Prešernov x in slovenska tehnološka umetnost',

http://www.rtvslo.si/kultura/razstave/podvojen-presernov-x-in-slovenska-tehnoloska-umetnost-jubilej-slovenije-v-berlinu/260783, 28.6.2011

Strokovna podpora:

Andrej Primožič, f18institut / cirkulacija2, Katja Sudec

Povezave:

www.f18institut.org

www.cirkulacija2.org

www.obrat.org

Projekt so omogočili: Ministrstvo za kulturo RS, MOL - Oddelek za kulturo, Občina Škofja Loka, Veleposlaništvo Republike Slovenije v Berlinu

# Galerija Kapelica - Galerija za sodobno raziskovalno umetnost

Video:

Link to HD video.

Muzej robotov // Robot Museum, Umetnostna galerija Maribor, 29.09.–06.11.11

2011-09-28T05:17:00.000-07:00

UGM l Maribor Art Gallery, Strossmayerjeva 6 and RSR | Rotovž Exhibition Salon, Trg Leona Štuklja 2

Opening: Thursday, 29 September 2011 at 19:00 in RSR with performance Fire Painting by Sanela Jahić

Authors: Srečo Dragan, Stefan Doepner, Luka Drinovec, Luka Frelih, Sanela Jahić, Zoran Srdić Janežič, Boštjan Kavčič, Nika Oblak & Primož Novak, Borut Savski, Sašo Sedlaček, Maja Smrekar, son:DA, Robertina Šebjanič, Igor Štromajer in Branko Zupan

The exhibition Robot Museum includes fields such as interactivity, robotics, informatics and multimedia. It’s the first comprehensive exhibition of this part of contemporary Slovenian art. The project involves exploration, production and exhibition of robots and their cultural content, as well as software-art, intermedia installations and performance. The word robot means a machine controlled by computer and programmed to move or perform specific tasks. This universal term was first used by Czech writer Karel Čapek (suggested by his brother Josef Čapek) in his play R.U.R (Rossum’s Universal Robots, 1920). In industry robots perform repetitive tasks or carry heavy loads. Some are designed to work in dangerous situations or they explore space and sea depths. They are equipped with sensors or video cameras and are even programmed to make decisions.

Until recently Slovenia hasn’t devoted much attention to robots and their contextualization in fine arts. This exhibition is based on previous researches and theoretical placements, and presents a transition from kinetic to cybernetic art. It will also raise questions about placement of robots as new media products in the field of arts. At the same time it will establish a bridge between science and art which are subjects of separate disciplines, but in the case of robots they represent an indispensable link.

In the Slovenian arts for the last twenty years robots appeared in artwork of artists like Srečo Dragan, Dušan Bučar, Luka Drinovec, Borut Savski, Stefan Doepner, Boštjan Kavčič… So far there have been fifteen projects related to robots (Sašo Sedlaček, Robertina Šebjanič, Luka Frelih, Maja Smrekar, Igor Štromajer, Nika Oblak & Primož Novak, Zoran Srdić Janežič, Branko Zupan, Sanela Jahić...). Most of the artists were participants of the International Festival of Computer Arts (1995-2008) and unfortunately some of their older artwork is lost.

With this project Maribor Art Gallery and MKC Maribor would like to present phenomena of robots in the arts and culture. The exhibition aims to encourage connection and dialogue between technical culture, its development and artwork, while developing innovative transfer of knowledge and skills.

Concept by: Jože Slaček

Curator: Meta Kordiš

Co-production: MKC Maribor

Photo by Ivan Leskošek Umetnostna galerija Maribor

Večer, sobota, 24. september 2011, članek Meta Kordiš, kustosinja UGM

‎

"Umetnostna galerija na drugem koncu Slovenije bo utripala v digitalnih impulzih. V Mariboru bo ob 19. uri odprtje razstave Muzej robotov, ki jo je zasnoval Jože Slaček. Povprašali smo ga o njegovem zanimanju za to področje." + "O vlogi kustosinje pri tem projektu pa smo povprašali Meto Kordiš." (Radio Študent, Kulturne novice, 29. 9. 2011, Zora Žbontar)

22.10.11 GUIDED TOUR / ROBOT MUSEUM: "Along with the guided tour, Sanela Jahić will execute the performance Fire Painting (2010). It is a cybernetic construction, which is composed of a set of 16 pumps creating pressure and pushing a lavish green colour kerosene oil mixture through the nozzles when the valves are released. The kerosene is sparked to combustion creating a formidable brilliant flame. The combustion is controlled by subtle movements of the sensor glove worn by the artist. She is literary playing with fire. The idea is built on a paradox of tactile handling of this primal element, using it as colour on a canvas like an action painter. She controls the image yet it constantly alludes her. Fire is the ultimate intangible and unstable light-based medium therefore any digital or electronic image can be emulated in its light (screens, projectors, televisions). There is no more frame, no more edge, just endless folds of infinite becoming of the image."

"Passengers from the Relative to the Absolute", Publication Studio and Appendix Project Space, Portland, OR

2011-09-07T10:52:00.000-07:00

Portland, Oregon. They say young people come to retire here. This summer a close friend of mine, David Knowles, invited me to come to Portland for what panned out to be a working vacation. David is the art director and print designer at Publication Studio, a laboratory "maker of special, constructed-one-at-a-time-by-hand books sold all over the world" with great philosophy on publication: "What PS makes a lot of, what we are growing, is "publics," not print-runs. Publication is the creation of a public. A public is strangers who have found common ground. It might be a public square or a community garden or a book - public space is any place where all are welcome and all who arrive have equal claim. For us, that's the space of literature. We make books as a kind of public space; and we extend that space into a digital commons (all our books can be read free and annotated online); we also host the social life of books."[1] David designed and put together a really nice book about my work. The book is entitled Passengers from the Absolute to the Relative. From the Publication Studio site: Sanela Jahić, an emerging Slovenian artist, has documented her work in Passengers from the Absolute to the Relative and discusses the boundaries and dynamics of contemporary painting practices in relation to her mechanical image-making machines. This publication encompasses a broad survey of Jahić's work with machines, mirrors and masks and features essays by Urška Jurman, Ida Hiršenfelder and Alen Ožbolt. Passengers from the Absolute to the Relative is going to go to the NY Art Book Fair, a copy of it was sold to MoMA and there is even one on the shelf at Yale University! (You can check some of David's other design work and activities here & here.)

Publication Studio + Book Launch and Artist Talk

Passengers from the Absolute to the Relative by Sanela Jahić

92 pp.
8.5" x 6" x .25"

ISBN: 9781935662778 (permalink)
hashtag: #pftattrPubStud

The book was published on the occasion of my first exhibition in the United States at Portland's Appendix Project Space. David got me into contact with Zachary Davis and Travis Fitzgerald, who, together with Joshua Pavlacky, are the co-curators of this venue for the production and display of contemporary art, performances and project-oriented, experimental installation works. In Kinki Magazine, Travis explains the character of Appendix: "We're less interested in tangible end products of an artist than with having a dialog with him/her. That's why we invite our artists to spend three weeks with us, to exchange ideas with one another, to discuss and develop the work." Zachary sees Portland as a magnet and emerging platform for young art: "There's an energy here that deliberately breaks the established rules. We haven't experienced it in other cities in the US." According to Travis, it's also much easier to meet people here. "The people I know in New York tell me that it's extraordinarily difficult to make contacts there, because nobody has time. Everyone is constantly under stress, fighting for survival. In Portland it's not so hard, because it's cheaper here. We can manage, for instance, to rent an entire house and have enough space to expand into a studio and exhibition space." Appendix was deliberately conceived as a non-commercial space. The team finances it themselves. The Kinki Magazine article concludes: "In contrast to the 'American Dream', the Portland art scene shows a different face of the USA, far from megalomania and profit greed. The increasingly industrial-appearing art market in defiance is developing an avant-garde here who, as a consequence, can live out their ideas. That suggests that the saying 'Land of the free, home of the brave' has not quite lost its meaning yet." Zack and Travis think out of the box. Think different. I spent two amazing weeks at Appendix.

Zack prepared a short description of my work for the press release: "Distilling the essential powers claimed by various modes of creation —painting's living evidence of touch, or the power of the word to remake the past—Jahić creates for herself situations of enhanced mechanical advantage. At one time, the hand held the charred stick, and the stick touched the world. Here, embodied in elaborate engineering, and suspended at a theoretical distance by inanimate causal series, the basic interaction is elongated and radically transformed."[2]

The opening of the Passengers from the Absolute to the Relative show was electrifying. The place was packed! After I gave my Fire Painting performance, this time with two pixels only, two people from the audience were invited to try and orchestrate the machine's response for themselves. The first participant was terrified of fire. I ensured her the machine was perfectly safe, but that didn't help her overcome the nerves, or the phobia. Her hand, now wearing the glass data glove, was trembling in the air, timidly pointing at the apparatus. The fingers bent and flexed, stumbled uncontrollably, which translated into agitated, sudden jerks of fire explosions in front of the transparent plane. The audience stayed with her, encouraging in exclamation: "Come on, you can do it!" The following partaker was fundamentally different. He was good, as good or better than me, despite this being his first interaction with the machine. "It's like playing a piano, isn't it?" His reciprocal synergy with fire was gentle, sensitive and smooth, a getting-to-know-one-another relationship between the fiery image and himself. Rather than huge outbursting blasts, the skillful and explorative touch inspired numerous variations within flames, creating wisps of fire paintings that differed each time. I was impressed. The two actions came from two diverse types of interaction, resulting in two memorable performances.

Photo by Edward G Sharp

Photo by Jamie Marie Wälchli

Portland is lovely in the summer. There's Cannon Beach nearby, where a lot of the ocean footage for the movie The Goonies was shot, vibrant music scene with Nice Nice, White Rainbow, Brainstorm, a Patrick Phillips classic that is the Potka and Snoop Dogg story, tacos and burritos, discussions on sci-fi and action superhero movies... The vibe here is open - people look at you, talk to you, and are incredibly friendly. A juxtaposition to the chilly vibe one can find in some too manicured parts of Europe. Thanks to the authors of the essays in my book and Manuel for a late night debugging session. Thanks to Travis and Zack for the opportunity and all their help. And thanks to David who encouraged and facilitated this visit and its working agenda in the first place, and my boyfriend, Andrej, for joining me on the ride.

"WE SHALL DRAW GRAND DESIGNS…"

2011-08-11T14:29:00.000-07:00

Photos by Janez Pelko

NOWDAYS, Boris Groys argues, "the ultimate problem of design is not how I design the world outside myself but how I design myself or rather how I deal with the way in which the world designs me." Today's self-design is a mass culture praxis par excellence, says Groys. "Everybody is becoming an artwork, while being its author at the same time."

A person is walking down the street wearing a mask as a 'curtain wall' that is reminiscent of architectural modernism's glass walls wrapping. The mask is made of glass, its surface clad in mirror. While such mirroring look allows one not to subject his or her face to the gaze of the other, one is nonetheless transformed into a »context-bewitched being.«

"The mask out of glass protects us from the intrusive fragmentation of the contemporary subject." (Ida Hiršenfelder) The mask is based on Oskar Schlemmer's design.

...stran XX, Ministrstvo za zunanje zadeve, Berlin // ...Seite XX, Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin

2011-07-01T14:29:00.000-07:00

Die Ausstellung „...Seite XX“ thematisiert die Geschichte der Slowenen durch mehrere Perspektiven. Die wichtigsten Bücher des slowenischen literarischen Schaffens werden ausgestellt. Dabei kommt nicht nur das slowenische nationale Geschichtsmuseum (The National Museum of Contemporary History) mit der Präsentation „Rojstvo Slovenije“ („The making of Slovenia“) zu Wort, sondern eigens für diese Ausstellung haben auch 500 slowenische Schülerinnen und Schüler die geschichtlichen Meilensteine des Landes bewertet.

Sanela Jahić und Stefan Doepner machen in ihrem „künstlerisch-mechanischen Buch“ auf den Wandel der Geschichtsschreibung aufmerksam. In dem Buch der slowenischen Künstlerin werden alte geschichtliche Inhalte durch neue ersetzt, was im Rahmen der Entstehung des neuen Staates wie ein Mechanismus funktioniert. Mit den 20 Jahren Sloweniens setzt sich in einem kurzen Text auch der in Deutschland studierende slowenische Sozialwissenschaftler Matej Kralj auseinander.

Kuratorin: Katja Sudec | Autoren der Ausstellung: Stefan Doepner, Sanela Jahić, Matej Kralj, The National Museum of Contemporary History | Wissenschaftliche Unterst・zung: Splošna knjižnica Ljutomer/Muzej, Gymnasium Ljutomer (Klasse Franc Čuš) | Sponsoren: UNIKI, ARS-3, Foto TIVADAR, Stadtgemeinde Škofja Loka | Veranstaltungsorganisator: Botschaft der Republik Slowenien, Auswätiges Amt

About the work:

The mechanical book is an array of plastic cylinders which are individually pushed up and down by the matrix of electromagnets positioned below the cylinders. When simultaneously in the up position, a group of blocks forms a letter, letters form words and words combine into sentences. Because the book is imbedded with kinetic and mechanical dimension, it dictates the rhythm of reading. Mechanical book incites contemplative reading as a playful challenge to contemporary fast tempo of information absorption. In the nature of technology, the book can also malfunction, thus making the reading of its content impossible. A defect might even be involved in it as a subordinate factor.

Mechanical book writes and deletes a specific content, which derives from some of the material regarding the history of Slovenia that was excluded from slovenian libraries as of late. Such act of exclusion leads to the artificially constructed history, deletion of some segments within the nation's presentation and to the manipulation of the past as an attempt to (re)construct "cleaner" historical image and identity of and for the state apparatus. While history gets rewritten time and time again, this book as a constructed apparatus rewrites some of those found deletions.

The project support: Andrej Primožič, Kapelica Gallery, Škofja Loka municipality and mayor mag. Miha Ješe, Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia Berlin.

"... Projekt Sanele Jahić in Stefana Doepnerja bi lahko označili celo za moteč ali provokativen v kontekstu razstave, ki pripada tistemu tipu, ki naj bi narod predvsem slavile in ki naj bi problematiziranje zgodovinske naracije za nekaj časa potisnile vstran. Mehanična knjiga pa seže prav v srž ene od linij (političnih) kontroverz, ki predvsem zadnjih nekaj let pretresajo slovenski javni prostor. Govori namreč o pisanju, vnovičnem pisanju, korigiranju ... zgodovine. Ko se lesene tipke Mehanične knjige premikajo navzdol in navzgor, njihove kombinacije tvorijo posamezne črke, zaporedje teh besede in niz zadnjih stavke. Ti so izbrani iz besedil, ki se na različne načine navezujejo na zgodovino Slovenije. Kot vsak stroj tudi mehanična knjiga včasih stori (ne)namerno napako in besedilo se spremeni ..." (Polona Balantič, Podvojen Prešernov X in slovenska tehnološka umetnost – jubilej Slovenije v Berlinu)

Članki // Articles:

Podvojen Prešernov X in slovenska tehnološka umetnost - jubilej Slovenije v Berlinu

Razstava …Seite XX: Slovenija se predstavi v Berlinu

Working on Mechanical Book, part II

2011-06-30T04:56:00.000-07:00

Electronics

4th prototype

Stefan Doepner

At Cirkulacija 2 in Tovarna Rog

Andrej Primožič

Some tools we made in order to ease the process and get proper results

Video - 30 pixels already responding, 470 to go.

Prototip za mehanično knjigo // Prototype for Mechanical book, part I

2011-05-27T08:05:00.000-07:00

Co-author: Stefan Doepner (f18institut, Cirkulacija 2, kud Obrat)

"Odjeća kao simbol identiteta", Gradska galerija Bihać // Exhibition "Clothing as a symbol of identity", City Gallery, Bihać, 23.05.-11.06.2011.

2011-05-26T04:26:00.000-07:00

The exhibition Clothing as a Symbol of Identity shows works of Bosnian and Herzegovinian artists who use clothes, acts of dressing, a wardrobe or techniques and technologies of clothing production. Through such a wide range of topics, the exhibition points to specific features of clothing items as signs and to multilayered social messages they convey. It also emphasizes the diversity of ways in which it is possible to identify with someone or something through clothing as well as the articulation, circulation and interaction of clothes in the space in which they exists. Conceptualizing, designing, sowing, knitting, putting on, wearing or presenting clothes thus become in artistic consideration acts for their own sake, and thereby an autonomous artistic sign of a new social reality.

In addition to eleven Bosnian and Herzegovinian artists of different sensibilities – Maja Bajević, Jusuf Hadžifejzović, Amila Hrustić, Sanela Jahić, Šejla Kamerić, Margareta Kern, Zlatko Kopljar, Alem Korkut, Mirko Marić, Borjana Mrđa and Damir Nikšić – the exhibition features a work of Croatian fashion designer and artist Silvijo Vujičić.

(Irfan Hošić, MA, Bihać University)

Knitting machine, construction process

2011-03-13T15:41:00.000-07:00

2 axis down, 4 to go.

This project was developed with the help of Andrej Primožič (mechanical engineer) and Manuel Odendahl (software engineer).

Stroji za cinike in perfekcioniste // Machines for Cynics and Perfectionists, Galerija Kapelica, 30.11. - 07.12.2010

2010-12-03T15:18:00.000-08:00

"Stroji za cinike in perfekcioniste so trije objekti, ki sestavljajo navidez nemogoče podobe. Inteligenco strojev določa obsesivna formalistična estetika in brezhibno delovanje, ki se postavlja proti konvencijam postmodernizma. »Maska« iz stekla nas zaščiti pred vsiljivo fragmentiranostjo sodobnega subjekta. Robotska konstrukcija v »Ognjeni sliki« določa eksplozivne nivoje v mešanici kerozina. Izgorevanje je možno uravnavati s subtilnimi premiki senzorne rokavice za taktilno oblikovanje goreče slike. Podobo lahko nadziramo, a hkrati nam stalno uhaja iz nadzora. Hekani Pletilni stroj je utopični sistem, ki bo v času razstave spletel podobo iz pikslov, ki so prevedeni v zanke. Slika ne obstaja več izven digitalne percepcije. Vsebina podobe bo vidna le za kratek čas ob koncu razstave, ko bo pletilni stroj podobo izbrisal / podrl."

Ida Hiršenfelder

Avtorica bo aktivirala 'Ognjene slike' vsak delavnik od 18. do 20. ure.
Zahvala: Andrej Primožič, Manuel Odendahl, Franci Černelč, Marjan Matanovič in Zvonko Drobnič.

Projekt so podprli: Ministrstvo za kulturo RS, MOL - Oddelek za kulturo in ŠOU v Ljubljani.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Machines for Cynics and Perfectionists" are three objects, which produce seemingly impossible images. Contrary to the postmodernist conventions, the machine intelligence is determined by an obsessive formalist aesthetic and flawless operation. "Mask" out of glass protects us from the intrusive fragmentation of the contemporary subject. The robotic construction in "Fire Painting" sets off explosive levels of kerosene. Its burning can be handled by subtile movements of the sensory data glove for tactile formulation of the fiery image. Thus, the image can be manipulated, yet it constantly escapes control. Hacked "Knitting Machine" is the utopian system, which knits the image out of pixels for the duration of the exhibition. Here the pixel is translated into a noose and the image does not exist outside the digital perception anymore. Its content will be revealed only for a short time at the end of the exhibition and a moment later the Knitting machine will unravel the image.

The author will activate "fire paintings" every workday from 18.00 - 20.00.
Thank you: Andrej Primožič, Manuel Odendahl, Franci Černelč, Marjan Matanovič and Zvonko Drobnič.

The project support: Ministry of Culture RS, MOL - Department for Culture and ŠOU in Ljubljana.

http://www.radiostudent.si/article.php?sid=25760

http://www.siol.net/kultura/dogodki/2010/12/beja_sanela_jahic.aspx

Stroji za cinike in perfekcioniste // Machines for Cynics and Perfectionists, performance in Kapelica Gallery

2010-12-02T07:02:00.000-08:00

Photos: Mihael Peter Fras

Sanela Jahić: Stroji za cinike in perfekcioniste from Andrej Erzen on Vimeo.

Fire Painting, 2010 - video

More on Fire Painting:

Artist Painting With Fire

Pyro Sculptor Coaxes Fire Like A Superhero Using Gestural Controls

Stroji za cinike in perfekcioniste

Working in overdrive

2010-10-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

Besides the Fire Painting, I am building another apparatus The Knitting Machine. Its purpose is to slowly knit an image for the duration of an exhibition. On the last exhibition day the image is completed, knitted in its entirety once the last noose is pulled tight. A moment later, the image is unravelled like an old pullover and the knitting threads wind back onto the spools.

I am currently in the process of hacking a particular forty year old knitting machine with the plan to MOC it. When "tamed" in a new format, the machine will knit a 3-D image, most likely an anaglyph image perceived with some sort of archetypical 3-D glasses with red and cyan color filters (red-green or red-blue lenses could do as well). This should be an interesting experiment and a further learning experience on perception - before tackling holography next. The speed of knitting will be determined by a timer - therefore it will itself be a variable - and the constructed image has to unravel in the end.

Furthermore, I am also sketching out and developing an open source mechanical book, the concept of which was published on this blog years ago. The book, which might be realized together with Stefan Doepner (f18institut), will be presented in the building of Federal Foreign Office in Berlin next year for the occasion of marking the 20th anniversary of Slovenia's independence. Constructed as a mechanical apparatus, this work will visualize and articulate the findings of a workshop coordinated by Katja Sudec, where youngsters - the workshop participants - will be joined by historians in order to explore the material that has been excluded from Slovenian libraries as of late. Such act leads to the artificially constructed history and manipulation of the past in an attempt to construct "cleaner" history and identity of and for the state apparatus. As history gets rewritten over and over and over again this book will rewrite some of the found deletions in interesting ways. Afterwards, it will be open for articulating other contents as well.

Now I am off to prepare for a lecture on Fire Painting, which I'll be giving to the students of Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. And listen to Gracias A La Vida by Mercedes Sosa. And take time to sit and radically do nothing too.

Stepper motor driver

UPDATES:
1. Andrej and I worked on this 3D model for ages and I finally got the parts for the Knitting machine in a small shoe box, after they got laser cut out of plywood earlier today. These components remind me of LEGO bricks.

2. In addition, the decision to redesign the Fire Painting, due to its unsatisfactory existing form, led to the meeting and working with the amazing master glass craftsman Zvone. His abilities, support and his equipment are making the exhaustive redesign possible.

Device_art 3.010 Croatia_Slovenia_Japan, Tokyo, Miraikan – National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, 23.09.2010. - 01.10.2010.

2010-10-07T17:48:00.000-07:00

My small Sketch out of LEGO bricks, packed in a shoe box and on its way to Tokyo.

http://www.kontejner.org/device-art-3010-english

Fire Painting, performance, Weimar, 20.09.2010

2010-09-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

Photos: Loukas Bartatilas and Jennis Li Cheng Tien

Thanks to special people: Andrej Primozič, Manuel Odendahl, Marjan Matanovič and Zvonko Drobnič.

Fire Painting, 2010

2010-08-26T15:16:00.000-07:00

Photos: Janez Pelko

Excerpts on Fire Painting

2010-08-17T08:59:00.000-07:00

i. GUIDE TO PERFECTIONISM

The Perfectionist’s life is a rat race. I am a rat with perfectionist tendencies that is stranded on a treadmill to stretch and strain myself compulsively and unremittingly toward impossible goals, standards high beyond reach or reason. It is the flawless, faultless ideal vision I 'm after. Being a perfected digital image rather than flesh and blood. That is before my humanity, my imperfection slaps me in the face and knocks me right off the treadmill.

My world is ostensibly simple: things are right or wrong, good or bad, the best or the worst. These are the only categories that exist. No grey areas, no nuances or complexities, no middle ground to dare to lose one’s footing momentarily – solely the extremes of the continuum. All or nothing. And a true Perfectionist takes the existence of extremes to the extreme. In a perfectionist fantasy world, nothing is impossible. It seems as though the water supply here is spiked with ecstasy. Feeling lethargic while oblivious to any real-world constraints, I fly high, detached in arrogance and under the illusion that I am the master of my destiny, that I create my reality. Humming Eminem’s new song – “I’m going to be what I set out to be without a doubt undoubtedly, and all those who look down on me I’m tearing down your balcony” – absurd and pathetic as it sounds, I have zero intention to read the 5-minute guide to quitting the rat race or to change my all-or-nothing approach and adopt the 80/20 Pareto Principle rule for that matter. This busy mechanical hobgoblin of a treadmill, an animator for making a racket while running in place in a monotonous, wearisome routine, is my very own construct. In other words, I live in the psychological prison of my own making.

With the unyielding and rigid mechanical mind-set that is ill-suited for modern fluidity, I am an emotional and cognitive dogmatist plagued by closed-heartedness and closed-mindedness. Dogmatic plus not wanting to be a slacker, I take the mantra ‘No pain, no gain’ in the wrong direction and thus set myself to repeat the quote, made famous by California’s governor when he was still the Terminator: “I am a machine.”

Tal Ben-Shahar traces perfectionism’s intellectual roots to Plato, the father of Western philosophy. Aristotle, Plato’s student, broke away from his teacher to reflect on realism and thus became de facto father of optimalism. The distinction between Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy is explicit in Raphael’s painting The School of Athens, in which Plato points to the sky, to the perfect and Aristotle points to the ground, to this world, to the real. Here is how Ben-Shahar states it:

“Plato argues that although we may think we live in the real world, we do not; we are like cave dwellers who are facing away from the entrance to the cave, bound and unable to turn around and leave. The real world, the world of perfect forms, exists outside the cave, where a fire burns and projects the shadows of the forms onto the walls of the cave for us to see. Each object that we perceive in our illusory world is a projection of the perfect form that exists in the real world: the people we see around us are not real but imperfect imitations of the perfect human. Unlike Plato, Aristotle’s view of reality is not at odds with our experience of the world. There is only one reality, that which we perceive through our senses, so experience precedes thinking.”

At this point, if politics is what interests you, the significance of the Platonic and Aristotelian perspectives could help you understand that all political conflicts can essentially be boiled down to a disagreement between two different views of human nature: the constrained view and the unconstrained view:

“Those who lean toward the constrained view believe that human nature is immutable: it does not change, and we should not waste time and effort trying to modify it. Human flaws are inevitable, and the best we can do is to accept our nature, its constraints, its imperfectability—and then optimalize the outcome based on what we have. Because we cannot change our nature, we must create social institutions that will channel our given nature in the right directions. In contrast, those who hold the unconstrained view believe that human nature can be changed and improved: solutions exist to every problem, and we should not compromise or be resigned to our imperfections. The role of social institutions is to create systems that will modify our species in the right direction. We therefore sometimes need to work against our nature to conquer it. In the unconstrained vision, human nature is itself a variable and in fact a central variable to be changed.”

Both sides prescribe very different political systems. The belief in constrained nature is typically upheld by free-market capitalists, given the capitalist system's attempt to channel the individual's self-interest for the common good. Thus, I ought to be careful and street smart when I address myself to a capitalist: I appeal not to the humanity of the other, but to the other's self-interest and self-love, and never talk to the other out of my own necessities, but to the other's avantages. To proceed carefully at the other end of the philosophical divide is smart as well: the unconstrained view, which I myself implicitly or explicitly defend, promotes various forms of utopianism, and herein lies the danger of its advocate being tagged a Communist or a Fascist, given the attempt to reawaken the superman.

As you now know, too many oppressions have been conducted in the name of the Idea of humanity, and the machinery, which was to regulate the psychopathology of everyday life, proved itself just as neurotic and psychotic. From a good theory, it does not follow that the practice is just.

This done, imagine I as a perfectionist now make myself into an artist. What corpus would my artwork elicit and what would it illustrate, advocate or testify to? The work I create might as well be a machine of some sort since I already declared myself as one, with my approach and my qualities being very much machine-like. A machine which proves my theory and upholds my practice; in short, it embodies me and my doctrine. I put myself on a par with it, thus positioning myself to see through it. Better still, I resemble a slug inserted into a slot machine.

By “internalizing” the “mechanizing Perfect”, humanness is what escapes me. Similarly, a person who spends a lot of time making the absolute perfect machine works only to erase him- or herself. It is an effort to remove and erase any trace of the subject. Or perhaps vice versa, the industrial smoothness, which generally suits the basic fact of production, obliterates any trace of the subject; smoothness like an “exclusion” of subject, here is an interesting clinical question... In industrial domain one can notice that a human subject only intervenes in it by one way: that of a mistake, accident or failure. According to Gérard Wajcman, the subject exists when there is a certain imperfection in the object. Only that which malfunctions and fails has its author. If the subject has his or her place in the industry, then it is only as the subject of mistake or the author of imperfection.

After the passage above, all is the same: I have not stopped being a perfectionist and an artist with a machine in mind. Because the Perfectionist perpetually swings between, on one hand, high hope and great expectations and, on the other, disillusionment and frustration, from affirmation to negation and back, and forth, and back ... until the motor of contradiction is exhausted, an element is engaged in the machine to properly mirror the existence between extremes with no midpoints. Among all phenomena, it is the ultra-living element of fire in which I may lay claim to the opposing states that shake me. Prometheus stole fire from the gods (idealism) and gave it to humans (realism). Fire rises from the depths of the substance and it plunges back down into the substance and hides there, pent-up, like hate or vengeance, it shines in Paradise and it burns in Hell, it is cookery and it is apocalypse, thus it can carry the ridiculous into the sublime, a phenomenon both monotonous and brilliant, a really total phenomenon that contradicts itself; “the intensity of fire cannot be measured by the egg timer – the egg is done when a drop of water, a drop of saliva, evaporates on the shell” – yet fire can link the small to the great, oscillate between destruction and a renewal. Fire passes the irony of a joke: art means anything and everything (whatever), as does fire.

ii. ELEMENT OF FIRE

I chose to make much of the construction for the fire staging device out of transparent material – glass – which keeps up with the marching clarity of an illusion, making its absurdity also transparent at once. This choice is decisive of the thing and determines it. If the machine is of huge proportions, glass makes its corporeity bodiless due to transparency. Moreover, limitless extension is implied here. The optical play between solidity, fullness and monumentality of form vis-à-vis its dissolution leads to the interplay of the device and its surroundings; glancing at the volume itself, the pure glassy construction is see through and through it you see what encircles it, albeit not clearly due to refracted light. The engineering glass construction disappears, yet here it is, paradoxically belied with fragility as it might break at any given moment of carelessness, accident or mistake.

Because some parts for completing my design were missing, I visited the glass factory where workers stationed about the furnace behind the fire-screen scooped up the material with iron rods and gave it shape with the breath from their lips. Transparent pipe lines and fuel tanks attained their forms in order to conduct fuel for ignition. Oil or gas: I can always use vodka (water that flames) as well.

In the crowning assembly process, the main body of my apparatus is engineered like a modular system: each particular module is identical to the other; and each particular module is rigged with a nozzle attached to the electromagnetic valve, the valve attached to the fuel pump and the pump attached to the fuel tank. There are 16 modules altogether, networked into the square – 4 x 4 – matrix, where one nozzle is one pixel. One nozzle and one valve regulate one flame together, the size of it, the rhythmic of its movement and appearance, and subsequently the joining of this flame with another and with the rest of the flames.

I set your machine in motion and see the pumps creating the pressure, then numerous valves on pipes opening paths through nozzles, pushing the fuel to combustion. In Fire as a material becomes an image. The image created lavishly by open flames. The apparatus draws a fire-curtain out of the plane strangely reminiscent of a painting's canvas, so I come up with the perfect name for it. I call it Fire Painting.

Today the field of art in its totality can be seen as an embodiment of paradox. My machine is to be a paradox-object, which simultaneously embodies thesis and antithesis, a self-contradiction really. After all, I am a perfectionist who is an artist and the life of such is rich with absurd contradictions. I take some comfort in the fact: to be a paradox-object seems to be the normative requirement for any contemporary work or artwork. "Fill the artwork with a potentially infinite plurality of interpretations, that are open in their meaning, that do not impose on the spectator any specific ideology, or theory, or faith. And make sure that this appearance of infinite plurality is, of course, only an illusion. De facto there is only one correct interpretation that it imposes on the spectator: as a paradox-object, this work requires a perfectly paradoxical, self-contradictory reaction. This is the only adequate interpretation of a paradox," as Boris Groys says. I am in luck here because I am dealing with fire which can explain just about anything. Fire is the ultimate self-contradicting phenomenon, a complete paradoxical element.

Fire feeds itself like a living creature and for a modern mind to feed a fire has become a commonplace synonym for keeping it going with all the charge of the original naiveté. For Gaston Bachelard:

"Psychically, you are created by your reverie – created and limited by your reverie – for it is the reverie which delineates the furthest limits of your mind. Imagination works at the summit of the mind like a flame, and it is to the Dadaist region of the metaphor of the metaphor where reverie transforms forms that have previously been transformed. And metaphors are not simple idealizations which take off like rockets only to display their insignificance on bursting in the sky [like fireworks on the New Year’s Eve], but on the contrary metaphors summon one another and are more coordinated than sensations, so much so that a poetic mind is purely and simply a syntax of metaphors.” Such mind is both conductive to the acquiring of a neurosis and to the writing of manifestos: “one can find paradise in fire’s movement or in its repose, in the flame or in the ashes.”

If my fire apparatus wasn’t built, I could nonetheless produce fire like an old woman who “vented her rage by breaking off two sticks from the trees and rubbing them violently together.” Fire is the exorcist of inner rage, of a hand that has become irritable. Furthermore, as one burns shit or ignites one’s fart, fire is all-purifying because it suppresses nauseous odors. No, seriously, one of the reasons for attributing to fire a value of purgation and purification could be its power of deodorization. The odor compels recognition either by its most insidious or by its importunate presence. It truly violates your privacy. According to Bachelard, the second reason for the principle of purification by fire, a reason that is far more sophisticated, is that fire separates and destroys material impurities. In other words, that which has gone through the ordeal of fire has gained in purity. On the other hand, the complete purification of the concept of fire is retarded by the fact that fire leaves ashes.

I shall not deal with the theological problem of purification. To give a full account of that would require a very long study. And to prove my own atheism – the thing is weariful... There are, however, other Fire Paintings from the art world that can serve as the spiritual example, namely those of Yves Klein. Klein created them by using models smeared with paint, as with his earlier Anthropometries, but also soaked with water, leaving their wet print on the paper, which served to hinder the action of flames. Equipped with an industrial blowtorch with varying degrees of intensity, he then revealed the traces of their silhouette by shaping them with fire. The body, put to the test of fire, is as though purified of its cinder.

In this respect, the transformation of fire into light through a process of idealization is the principle of the transcendence with light not only a symbol but an agent of purity. Look at the eternal flames: there is one burning in Sarajevo in memory of the military and civilian victims of the Second World War, one in Madrid honoring all those who died fighting for Spain, in Liverpool as the memorial to those who died in the Hillsborough disaster, in Moscow to honor the dead of the Great Patriotic War, in Budapest commemorating the revolutionaries of the 1956 uprising against control by the Soviet Union... Many of these very real annihilations happened on the hands of “False Marias”(In the famous scene from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926), the revolutionary agitator is burnt like a witch, although she is clearly modeled on the symbolic female figures that since the French Revolution have embodied the ideals of freedom and revolution. As she is burning, this female figure, capable of “luring” masses, is exposed as a robot. The flames destroy her and unmask a mechanical, nonhuman construct, a machine insensitive to pain and not a living human being.).

iii. FIRE PAINTING IS A PROPER NAME

Why do I insist on calling my machine a painting?

When you dispossess painting of all its cookery, its practice, its technique, when you erase the colors, remove the canvas, clean the brushes, what is left? The name? A corpse? Nothing? As an artist with the perfectionist tick, I started out as a painter. Fire Painting, in retrospect, has everything my past works have; all the while it is not just their continuation, but rather their radicalization. With it, I went back to the beginning (painting) and simultaneously the end (machine) of my practice.

It is indeed a funny and strange coincidence that Duchamp first conceived his Bicycle Wheel as a flame in the fireplace, as that which one contemplates with absorbed eyes, as a mutable, unsettled and pleasant object that is almost absent from itself and is instead inhabited by one’s captured but vagabond thoughts: a meditative spinning wheel for long winter nights. Some sort of an altar for gazes. One can also see Malevich’s Black Square as a huge black square of dynamite. But it is impossible to detect the slightest suicidal temptation in it. Because, by and large, “energetic combustion of the force of negation” is just that: when a painter blows up the painting, the painter blows up him- or herself along the way. In Fire Painting, that square of dynamite does go off exploding to set up a nice fireplace as an altar for gazes.

I don’t call the Fire Painting a painting in the way you would call a chestnut a chestnut, I baptize it a painting out of aesthetic conviction. This is a search for pure painting that might as well be a destructive weapon. Fire Painting butts up against the notion of painting not only to look at its essential norms and limiting conditions, but to push back or transgress these limits with abandonment, destruction or deconstruction of pictorial conventions.

First up: the integrity of a picture plane. Many clues show that a painting is a liar. It is an optical instrument for showing the world, which has the power to disguise itself as a window, open into the world and all its stories and all its ideas and all its ideals, which paint themselves illusionary onto this window or through it. Painting shows what illusion really is – nothing more than a little paint on the surface. Determined to shame the lying illusionism ,I ignite the Fire Painting with a shout: “Burn, baby, burn!” Here, now, is a violent imperative: against the painting-that-gives-to-perceive in the form of illusion, and for the painting on the position of action-interruption-rift. In such trailblazing action, the flames of combustion swallow the canvas, the surface, the picture plane. By which Fire Painting follows another lead, it sings another song: the surface is in itself a certain small lie. The picture plane replaced by a different surface, a surface made out of flames, a fiery surface that is fired up by an iconoclastic rage only to fall like the curtain over illusion.

In Fire Painting, the surface is made out of flames and it might not even be real; it might itself be an illusion unless you want to prove otherwise – go ahead: Touch it. Secondly, the fire curtain is, at once, the surface and the image. Now, here is the crux of the matter. Fire surpasses every image and every word. Not only does it obliterate all illusions that previously presented themselves on the canvas; it obliterates the canvas too, and takes over as an ultimate illusion. Thirdly, fire itself is misleading and ambiguous. It is the principle of the essential ambiguity which is not without charm. This charm is so well defined that it has become banal to say, “We love to see a log fire burning in the fireplace.” It is a problem that no one has managed to study objectively, “one in which the initial charm is so strong that it has the power to warp the minds of the clearest thinkers and to keep bringing them back to the poetic fold in which dreams replace thoughts and poems conceal theorems.” For fire is a seed, and fire curtain thus an LSD tab. You can give in to its seductive maneuvering appeal to close your eyes, to spare yourself with all the weight of reality for the good of I-don't-know-what-kind-of elevating feelings, imagination or dreams – or »inner experiencing« if you use this horrible psychological expression, illusions or utopias. Such is the affective power of fire that it creates images out of desire; it is a source of reveries. Yet reveries represent futility; they are as unsubstantial as flames. And finally, fire is pure. At the extreme limit, at the point of flame, where color gives way to an almost invisible vibration. Then fire is dematerialized; it loses its reality; it becomes pure spirit.

Next up: the framing of the painting. In the case of Fire Painting, the frame is no longer external to the painting, it is no longer a parergon [an element added to work], but its inner part instead. The machine works like a frame in which a new painting springs up in the form of the fire-image. Such frame passes the line and intervenes into the painting. So you can look at the machine as the frame of the fire-image with this frame also being the producer of that very fiery image, but it is also recommendable to perceive the machine as the background of a figure with that figure being fire. To reiterate, in this slick relationship the machine acts as the offspring for the fire-image and the fire-image cannot exist without the machine as its background. The fire-image steps into the background as soon as the machine in the background stops generating it and thus sneaks over it. In other words, the mechanical background isn’t just a background just like the fire-image is no longer just an image. The image and the machine are both the figure and the background, simultaneously and inseparably.

iv. GALLERY VERSUS PUBLIC SPACE

The mechanical structure I arrived at combines the investigation of the perfectionist reality with the investigation of the aesthetic that suits it. I decided to embed the Fire Painting in a more “realistic structure” of the public space and leave the safety of gallery walls, albeit not completely as shown later. Galleries and museums as institutions can affix the statement “This is art” to just about whatever object steps through their gates. In this respect, one thing I could achieve by setting my bizarre construction outside is that a different audience stops, wonders, talks about it. Maybe he or she will laugh at the daredevil captured in the machine, or maybe at its uselessness squared, since the machine not only cannot be put to any use, but – by stimulating usefulness – purports the behavior of useable machines, of whose components it consists?

At the beginning, my idea was an overly simplified one: one way to leave the safe gallery walls is to make something: a painting, which literally threatens to destroy them or smoke them out. Make a dangerous apparatus or an apparatus operating with such a dangerous material like fire that it seems all the more threatening on account of the unpredictability and hazardousness of the material, which the machine tries to control. So, if it signifies danger for a gallery, it should then rather perform outside. And only after the apparatus stops performing, can it resign in art museums, where one is able to contemplate its design but not see it in action. Thus after the performance, the machine is put in a gallery space, not to perform but rather to be silent, without a voice, a relic, which resigns as all artworks within museums or galleries normally do. An object passing away with days, a paralyzed object that is a symbol of its own nullity.

Now, Fire Painting burns more than once. Each time it returns in the public space to shoot out new beams. And each time the performance lasts for twenty minutes or so. And if in my prevous kinetic work light plays upon and laughs over the surface of things, heat in Fire Painting penetrates. This need to penetrate, to go to the interior of things, to the interior of beings, is one attraction of the intuition of inner heat. Just as if you lack fire, this burning failure will gnaw at your heart, so the fire will remain within you. And if you produce fire, the sphinx itself can consume you.

A hypnotized form of observation is involved in gazing into a fire. This slightly hypnotized condition, which is surprisingly constant in all fire watchers, is highly conductive to psychoanalytical investigation. The viewer is also wrenched from the passive, contemplative condition by the opportunity to orchestrate and play with fire. My motivation has been to create the machine that is interactive, involving the audience in the experience of controlling a mechanism that appears uncontrollable. Controlling the apparatus and affecting the fire-image is enabled by the data-glove, which the participant wears on his or her hand. The sensors on the data-glove translate small movements or gestures of the fingers into a grand gesture on the Fire Painting. Small gestures or actions cause changes or reactions within the fire-image by opening and closing the valves and applying various pressures on the nozzles of the machine. Flames are thus somewhat contained or mastered by the hand wearing such a glove. The work itself is creatively active together with the participant. They harmonize their relationship. Together, the participant and the machine create something that is irrational, purposeless, vital and new.

The person playing with fire is like a superman or a cleverly disobedient child who wants to obtain a personal knowledge of fire by stealing some matches from his or her father like a little Prometheus. In Bachelard's point of fact, "respect for fire is a respect that has been taught; it is not a natural respect. The reflex which makes you pull back your finger from the flame of a candle does not play any conscious role in your knowledge about fire. In reality the social prohibitions come first. This, then, is the true basis for the respect shown to flame: if the child brings his or her hand close to the fire the father raps him or her over the knuckles. Fire, then, can strike without having to burn. Whether this fire is flame or heat, lamp or stove, the vigilance is the same." What you first learn about fire is that you must not touch it.

Fire Painting, the process

2010-03-10T07:49:00.000-08:00

I plan to construct a Fire Painting. An apparatus that draws a fire-curtain out of the plane reminiscent of a painting's canvas. Much of the apparatus is made of transparent material that lets as much light through as possible, possibly polycarbonate if not crystal. The physical appearance of the machine is visually transparent. Getting the pipe lines, casings and nozzles cast in polycarbonate-resin-thermoplastic poses a technical problem, but many experiments usually overcome the difficulty. This is a very complex machine, for sure, though a harder task is to keep the fire burning. A fuel pump lies at the heart of the machine, with pipe lines as veins to conduct fuel for ignition. Oil or gas: one can always use vodka as well. As the pump creates the pressure, numerous valves on the pipes open paths through nozzles, pushing the fuel to combustion. Fire as a material becomes an image. The image created lavishly by open flames.

The performance of the apparatus is in sync with a human effort. Gabriel Shalom, a videomusician from Berlin, who is amazingly skillful at beatboxing, agrees to take on the task of manipulating the apparatus. His beatboxing skill, the vocal imitation of percussion sounds using mouth, lips, tongue, throat and nasal passage, serves as a stimulus and initiates or precipitates a reaction or a series of reactions from machine's valves. Now each valve regulates a flame, the color and size of it, the rhytmics in movement and appearance, and subsequently the joining of a flame with another and with the rest of the flames. The man and apparatus work together in producing the fire-image.

1. step: People, we have a spark!

2. step: Testing the prototype

Photos: Loukas Bartatilas and Thalia Raftopoulou

3. step: Testing the prototype with four nozzles

4. step: Working on the data-glove for human-machine interaction

5. step: Manufacturing glass components

Photo: Glass works Rogaska

6. step: Electronics

A short video

2010-02-21T13:37:00.000-08:00

Found a short video of mine capturing a CleanBot (part toothbrush - part mobile phone)...

Art of Engineering, exhibition in Berlin, 2.-14.2.2010

2010-02-10T07:07:00.000-08:00

Scanner III and Pendulum participated in the exhibition Art of Engineering, held at Deutsches Technikmuseum during Transmediale in Berlin. With its interdisciplinary competition Art of Engineering the Ferchau Engineering GmbH presented innovative new works bridging the two worlds of art and technology.

http://artofengineering.ferchau.de/wettbewerb-2010/sonderausstellung/preistraeger/

Das Werk
„Scanner III“ ist ein kinetischer Apparat, der eine spannungsreiche Licht- und Geräuschkulisse erzeugt. In Bewegung gebracht, generiert die Maschine ein „entmaterialisiertes“ Bild: eine Art Lichtschleier, der vor dem Betrachter entsteht. Das körperlose Bild zeigt ein schwarzes Erdloch mit Wurzelwerk. Nach den Worten der Künstlerin steht es „für einen inhaltslosen Identifikationspunkt (einen Sprung ins Nichts), eine Verwerfungslinie, die feste Strukturen und identitätsstiftende Verbindungen auftrennt“. Die kraftvolle Vertikalbewegung der Maschine und das die Bewegung begleitende Geräusch aufreißenden Materials unterstützen diesen Eindruck.

Das Konzept
Die Maschine seziert das Sehen unter Einbeziehung technischer Hilfsmittel. Als Apparat zur Inszenierung von Illusionen hinterfragt „Scanner III“ vor allem den Begriff „Realität“.

Das Werk
Der kinetische Apparat „Das Pendel“ wird durch Drücken der Start-Taste in Bewegung gesetzt. Eine spezielle Software und Elektronik ermöglichen es der Maschine, ein „entmaterialisiertes“ Bild zu erzeugen: einen Schleier aus Licht, der vor dem Betrachter erscheint. Die Fotografie zeigt eine zum Pflügen verwendete Egge, die auf dem Rücken einer Person schreibt. Der bildproduzierende Mechanismus des Apparates ist jederzeit sichtbar und laut und wird daher als Produzent des Trugbildes entlarvt. Das wahrhafte Wesen des Kunstwerks ist die Desillusionierung.

Das Konzept
„Das Pendel“ verleiht der kinetischen Kunst neue und spannende Impulse. Entscheidend dafür sind die Einbeziehung Neuer Medien und das Einfließen von Erkenntnissen aus den Neurowissenschaften. Das Motiv der Egge verweist auf Kafkas Novelle „In der Strafkolonie“.

Speaking Void / Underground political cell, Connewitz Kreuz, Leipzig, 2009

2009-05-27T00:42:00.000-07:00

In the underground cell, located amid urban space at Connewitz Kreuz in Leipzig, a philosopher would talk about the apparent post-political, post-ideological today. In Leipzig, a city caught in specific post-positions itself, this underground disposition searched for "impossible thought". With political analysis, in terms of ideological critique, the invisible space would show potential of turning into an "underground political cell" for a moment. On Tuesday, 24th February, it thus planned to attain such existence with the discussion from Sami Khatib and Gene Ray for the audience of 10. Two days prior to the scheduled event, the cell caved in.

According to Mick O'Kelly (Ireland): Your siting of this discourse via a hole in the ground is a curious and provocative conext to have a debate. Where political and cultural collapse is visible all around us going underground creates a political interstice. These critical reflections are particularly relevant in the current political and economic collapse. To think »impractically« perhaps brings an urgency in creating a void to think differently about future options. The philosophical and political strategies employed are challenging in that in this in-between this liminal zone is the potential for active and passive nihilism. Philosophically the hole/void holds the possibility of promise of a future to be filled with thought. The hole might perform as a controlled environment or release indeterminacy. The thought might pursue a manifesto or schizoanalysis.

I am currently continuing post-graduate studies in MFA Public Art and New Artistic Strategies at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany. The winter semester focused on exploring the relationship between art, architecture and urban space with advisement of the Guest Professor Mick O’Kelly. The location of the semester's project was Leipzig, a city northeast of Weimar. Leipzig is tied up in particular post-socialist, post-industrial position.

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

2009-05-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

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.

Pendulum, movies

2008-06-25T02:56:00.000-07:00

Just to warn: The two movies do not show the reality of image and movement, because the camera processing is not compatible with the speed of RGB LED pulsation. In contrast, the photos below are accurate.

Pendulum, in movement

2008-06-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

Pendulum, 2007-2008

2008-06-23T15:07:00.000-07:00

These photos were also taken in the P74 gallery in Ljubljana, during my solo exhibition Scanner and Pendulum.

I named my fourth larger kinetic object Pendulum, 2007-2008. This machine again uses the POV's ability of producing an almost holographic illusion. It shows a photo of drags writing in the subject's body. Kafka wrote of an old institutions' apparatus in his The Penal Colony (In der Strafkolonie, October 1914).

A Slovenian company in Tržič developed the software and electronic part for the object, based on POV during the years 2006-2007.

Scanner III, movies

2008-06-23T14:32:00.000-07:00

Scanner III, details

2008-06-23T14:26:00.000-07:00

These are the more detailed views of Scanner, when it was exhibited together with Pendulum in the Centre amd Gallery P74 in Ljubljana from April 15-May 8, 2008.

Scanner III (images)

2008-06-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

Scanner contains four images. Three of them represent a hole, each from a slightly different perspective to give an efect of rotation and absorption of its viewer (subject). Scanning ends with a photo of wreath made out of roots.

Scanner III, 2005-2008

2008-06-23T13:54:00.000-07:00

The third so called scanner machine I developed in collaboration with three Slovenian companies.

This latest scanner, 2005-2008, is a larger, more massive and monstrous variant of the first two types. Its scale is well grounded. The former motor for car wipers was replaced by a powerful industrial motor that offers programed and variable motion. Here I wanted to get rid of a surface with projection. The screen and neon light that moves linearly upwards and downwards and illuminates and exposes an image (like in the previous two scanners) are gone and replaced by RGB LED diodes and POV.

Therefore this sistem is a one axis, linear motion, full RGB collor POV. You can upload any kind of image into its flash drive to be shown in resolution of 212 x 212 pixles. Its asinhronos electric motor drive is controled by a frequecy regulator and its RGB LED line achives speed of 4 m/s. It needed to be 13 times faster to see the whole image floating in midair. I used arduino and some code in linux to control a digital camera that has a shutter time of 0.8 s to fully capture the whole image and later on show it on a projector.

When the machine stops the image disappears, evaporates, like a fabrication of fiction or an incarnation of emptiness. An empty point of identification is established: when somebody detaches him/herself from the role assigned to them, they can assume or occupy an empty position (eg jump into void, a hole or "to be in-between position"). A rupture emerges, a tearing with rigid structures and bonds of identity, like that of paternal authority, religious tenet, disciplinary regimes of family or nationalism.
The birthplace of subject is thus of key importance here. So I dug out a black hole and roots were found.

On somebody's path, Skofja Loka, april 2008

2008-05-27T02:43:00.000-07:00

The beech tree was set up in the middle of the town square in Skofja Loka. It was pulled out of the forest with the help of ranger Logonder and transported to a nearby farm for preparation. The action during the installation of the tree was surreal, as it performed a dance together with mechanical arm in mid air. At one point the tree was aligned with the second floor windows. It was then turned around and put on the ground as an interruption, thrown on somebody's path.

Roots and rupture, 2007-2008

2008-05-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

I was strolling the forests of Skofja Loka in december 2007, when I came across a fallen beech tree crossing my path like a colossal road block. It was over 25 meters long and over a 1000 kg heavy. I climbed on the trunk of the tree and lied there. This find initiated my search for roots and I ended up digging myself a black hole, literally. The redness of the soil was reminiscent of a wound, like a real rupture.

Dvolično ogledalo / Two-faced mirror, 2007

2008-05-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

Mehanična knjiga / Mechanical book, 2007

2008-04-27T12:47:00.000-07:00

Leta 2007 sem se s konceptom mehanične knjige prijavila na natečaj za avtorsko knjigo umetnika. Tukaj je krajša verzija:

Zanima me stvaritev mehanične knjige. Knjiga je skupek vgrajenih mehanizmov, ki kot elektronski škratje in mehanični mikroorganizmi izza besed in strani determinirajo prikaz in strukturo knjižnih partikularizmov, njihov videz in izpisovanje, tudi vsebino. V knjigo je vmeščena lumino-kinetična, mehanična dimenzija.

Mehanizmi izpisujejo besede in narekujejo ritmiko branja. Utrjene navade branja so postavljene pod vprašaj. Do kod lahko posameznik sledi določenemu načinu prikazovanja in razbiranja besed? Kdaj vizualni aspekt prevlada literarni značaj in obratno in kdaj se ujameta? Besede se kažejo zdaj počasi, zdaj hitro, od zgoraj navzdol, od spodaj navzgor, besede izginejo. Koliko se ob tem ohranijo v spominu? Takšen 'govor' knjige lahko poudarja ali pride v konflikt s procesom bralčeve imaginacije, ki se ob čitanju knjige odvija. Obenem se knjiga ponekod razpleta neodvisno, brez sodelovanja uporabnika. Ker je izpis besed, struktura strani, celo samo listanje vključeno v proces avtomatizacije, se lahko zgodi, da se branje knjige kdaj ujame v neskončno zanko ponavljanj. Na nekaterih delih je knjigo potrebno brati v temi. Drugod se tekst odvije hitro naprej in mu ni mogoče slediti. Ker je mehanične narave, se knjiga lahko pokvari in čitanje ni mogoče. Morda je v kakšno stran vgrajen 'defekt'. Knjiga je spremenljiv objekt.

In 2007 I submitted the concept for a mechanical book to the artist's authorial book competition. Here is a short outline:

I want to make a mechanical book. The book comprises built-in mechanisms that determine the presentation and structure of literary particularisms, their appearance, write out and contents, much like electronic and mechanical 'microorganisms' behind words and pages. A mechanical, lumino-kinetic dimension is embedded in the book.

Mechanisms write out words and dictate the rhythmics of reading. The usual reading habits are questioned. How far can one follow a certain way of words presenting themselves? When does the visual aspect prevail over the literal one or vice versa or where do both meet? The words appear slowly at one time, quickly at another, sometimes from above down, sometimes they disappear – what is the effect of this on one's memory and understanding? The book 'speaks' and accents or clashes with the process of the reader's imagination that untwines while reading. At times, the book reels off independently, without the user's participation. Because the write out of the words, the structure of the page and turning the pages over are a process of automation, the reading of such book can easily become caught in an endless snare of repetition. Parts of the book should be read in the dark. Other parts come to pass fast forward, so one cannot follow them. Because of its mechanical character the book can breakdown, making the reading impossible. Perhaps a 'defect' is built in one of the pages. The book is a transformative object.

Dogma II, 2004-2005

2008-04-22T06:09:00.000-07:00

Dogma II's mechanism

Out of my first mechanical venture, scanner Dogma II came, a machine proceeding from the logic of an optical reader. Positioned in the dark, scanner illumines and unveils the image part by part, hence alluding to the gist of taboo, to something problematic. The example of such is an absolute, a dogma, an oppressive authority, and herein lies my trauma. Therefore, demystification was needed. At first sight, Dogma II is not far from a praying machine. It wants to come close to a hologram, a light image, containing the power of illusion. Well, the machine behind the flatness is a visible mechanism that produces and directes the image, which in part is a re-enactment of the egg scene from the film Angel Heart, 1987.

Dogma II was first shown at my solo exhibition Illusions from the remotest times in Gallery Ivan Grohar, Škofja Loka in 2005.

Sketch, 2005

2008-04-22T05:14:00.000-07:00

Sketch, 2005
latex, LEGO bricks, 30 x 17 x 7 cm

A small sketch is made out of LEGO bricks and latex for a machine that has yet to be realized. Here valves control and open passages for the flow of compressed air that in turn causes the transformation of a two-dimensional plane into a relief, giving it the appearance of third dimension. Reserved for manifesting images or representations, the picture plane thus turns into a morphing membrane. With a realistic representation shown on such surface, the moving transformations and stretching of the plane from two dimensions to the third would finally cause the image to become abstract and unrecognizable.