<<soleil-journal>>/ 2024/ video sculpture; 4-channel video (55’’ 4K monitors), stereo sound 17’ 08’’, loop. steel construction/ installation views, inter arts center, malmö, 2024/ this sculptural video work has developed from a story about a solar powered printing press*, realised in 1882, using this event 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 newspaper 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 – 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 facility, as well as letterpress types and a gradual ‘zoom in’ on a modern silicon wafer. The text appear as a live script for the video sequence, highlighting notions of determinism, acceleration, exhaustion and economy – it at one point interrupts by the blue night; where the screens become ‘animated’, releasing internal desires to play. The sound track applies repetition and disintegration, partly by deconstructing Wagner’s ‘Rheingold’; gradually tearing and scrambling it into techno.
a newspaper printing facility, as well as letterpress types and a gradual ‘zoom in’ on a modern silicon wafer. The text appear as a live script for the video sequence, highlighting notions of determinism, acceleration, exhaustion and economy – it at one point interrupts by the blue night; where the screens become ‘animated’, releasing internal desires to play. The sound track applies repetition and disintegration, partly by deconstructing Wagner’s ‘Rheingold’; gradually tearing and scrambling it 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.
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