c8400.commovement3 (horizon)conceptContext"Horizon (Movement3)" was created during an art residency at Kronstadt, to which I was invited by the National Centre of Contemporary Art in Saint Petersburg. I made use of the situation that I was in Kronstadt (located on Kotlin Island in the Finish Gulf) during the winter season when the sea was frozen and developed an artwork based on walking in this landscape, on the frozen sea. After a number of exploratory walks I decided on a location that was suitable for my artwork. I decided to walk a circle in a specific distance from, around a small cylinder-shaped architectural structure located off the coast of the island. The walk itself became the centerpiece of "Movement3 (Horizon)". All other artifacts created do directly relate to the walk or build upon it. The walk itself is an artistic action inspired by land artists like Richard Long whose "A Line Made by Walking" became one of the milestones in contemporary art. A concise video loop, which has been assembled from image material recorded during the action, investigates the relation between the field of vision and landscape. It also relates back to my previous works of the "Movement" series. The video loop addresses the link between an experience in a landscape and its visual representation on film and relates to works of structural film like Michael Snow's "La Region Centrale" or Chris Welsby's "Seven Days". Concept "Horizon (Movement3)" consists of a pre-defined movement in a landscape and the record thereof. The idea of a moving observer has been part of the "Movement" series artworks from the beginning. In "Horizon (Movement3)" there is a specific focus on the experience of walking. "Horizon (Movement3)" takes place in an open landscape, which puts the horizon in a privileged position. The situation consisted of walking a circle around a previously specified point in space (axis). Walking a circle around a specific point refers to the general process of 'reading' - seeing and understanding - visual information: By observing an object or a scene from more different ("all") angles, we understand more. A circle has naturally many more meanings, which I however leave for now in the sphere of the potential. The record of "Horizon (Movement3)" exists in the form of a text (written or spoken) which provides a verbal description of the visual experience. A record exists also in the form of a video loop, which however goes beyond a simple documentary record. The video loop does not only refer to the action itself, but also to the process of documenting and the re-creation of what has been seen before: The conceptual, visual and spatiotemporal aspects of the work are combined. The written text provides a subjective account of the event, recorded from a participant (first-person) perspective. It is written in such a way that no beginning or end is recognizable when repeated multiple times - referencing the circular shape of the movement. The video loop draws on both the objective spatial arrangement as well as on the subjective experience: During the walking action, I was taking photographs at regular intervals. In a same way as the physical movement has been tied to a pre-determined axis, the photographs have been tied to the same point of reference: The axis is displayed on each photograph and aligned to the same place within the frame. The resulting set of still images has been turned into a video loop to stress the circularity of the movement. In addition to that, individual frames have been layered on top of each other, so that at each moment of the video, multiple viewpoints are visible at once. As a result, the details of the image become blurred and hazy, while the main elements - horizon, point of reference, direction - stay clear. The video alludes to the impossibility of objectively reconstructing historical reality second-by-second: We can access past event exists that exist in our memory as individual arrays of information. We can recall individual elements from the scene, we remember a general direction of movement and points of interest, but we an never recall a historical situation in its entirety. In addition to the text and the video, a number of drawings documenting the spatial constellation of the action exist. |