<<Soleil-Journal>>
2024
Video sculpture, 2024.
4-channel video (55’’ monitors, HD),
stereo sound, 17’08’’ loop.
The sculptural video work <<Soleil-Journal>> has developed from a story about a solar powered printing press*; realised in 1882, using this as a model in treating subjects of circulation, automation, abstraction and finance. The poetic gesture of connecting the sun with the production of language; a news-paper made with rays of light and evaporating water, can here be read in relation to a reverse image – one where physical objects transcend to data.
By working with this sense of coming into and moving out of materiality, – and language – the solar panel is thought of as an ambiguous surface of projection; four monitors oscillate between input and output; conducting transmitting, transforming. The imagery shows a newspaper printing facilitiy, as well as letterpress types and a gradual ‘zoom in’ on a modern silicon wafer, used in electronics. The text, which display as if being a live script for the video sequence, highlight notions of determinism, acceleration, exhaustion and economy – at one point interrupted by the blue night; where the screens become animated, releasing internal desires to play. The sound track applies repetition and disintegration, partially by deconstructing Wagners ‘Rheingold’; gradually tearing and scrambling into techno.
*
In 1882, Abel Pifre held a public demonstration in Paris, showcasing his invention; a concave mirror -measuring well over 3 meters in diameter- was directed towards the sky, to heat up a steam boiler which in turn powered a Marinoni printer. At a speed of roughly 500 copies/ hour, Pifre went on to print a publication which he had named ‘Soleil-Journal’, an edition of which, today, there seems to be no trace or further details about.
