News Keeps Us Awake
2011
Installation with video projection onto a purpose-built structure and photographic prints
Kultur Kontakt, Vienna, Austria
News Keeps Us Awake is an installation comprised of several elements that take place on the ground and the first floor of the gallery. In the very entrance of the gallery space there are photographic prints which are essentially comprised of two layers – The ‘background’ images include the interior rooms of a forgotten or secret nuclear bunker, and found images of monumental underwater ruins. A large-scale purpose built wooden structure reaches from the floor to the first level of the gallery. The silvery-grey colour of the structure mimics that of a ship, aeroplane or a tank, as if having been re-assembled from found fragments of these machines. On the first floor of the gallery the projector is fixed to a fence overlooking the ground floor. It projects images of underwater ruins featuring military hardware, ships, airplanes, tanks… The still images that are projected depict the site where one aspect of the machines’ life ended, at the same time they depict the growth of underwater organisms which take over in the second phase of the object’s life. These elements -the purpose-built structure, the prints and the projection- seem to be newly activated leftovers of another time. These spaces and the ‘structures’ are allegories of perhaps even more heroic expeditions of the invisible labour of time. In the case of both the bunker and the ruins, these subjects’ participation in the forward motion of time and progress has been arrested and looking at them now they take on the role of the un-dead, irrepressible and disturbing intrusions into the present day, entirely displaced, but vital as live reminders of recent events that aren’t ever fully dealt with.
News Keeps Us Awake
From the series of 3 photographic prints mounted on aluminium 90 x 120cm
News Keeps Us Awake
2011
Installation with video and costumes stuffed with daily newspaper
Shown as part of No Network, 1st Time Machine Biennial
Curated by Branko Dimitrijević
Atomic bunker, D-O, Konjic, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Several pieces of clothing are stuffed with newspaper and shaped into figures, which take various postures in the room – laying, leaning and crouching. The only light in the room is from a video projection which projects various stills of underwater ruins, ships and airplane wrecks. The implied actions of these figures appear to be very slight, as if the figures might be engaged in ineffectual labour or are just resting, leaning on pieces of furniture. Video stills depicting moments when a certain kind of life ended for a machine, an engine or a house also depict a type of growth of underwater organisms that take over in the second phase of the object’s life. Both of these elements -the figures and the stills- seem to be activated leftovers of another time.