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An exhibition refering to pathways of remembering, made of two installations.
One is a large-format portrait depicting the University in Breslau (Wrocław) professor Alois Alzheimer (1864-1915), a German psychiatrist and neuropathologist who promoted the non-restraint principle of avoiding violent measures against patients in psychiatric institutions.
The portrait comes from the work Modulator-Demodulator, realized for Wrocław and presented in 2015 at the WRO Biennale Test Exposure, by Bertrand Planes and Arnauld Colcomb, which shows that through the fading in the transmission of particles of information, the image we receive is always incomplete.
The second is an installation comprising five monitors spread across the gallery space, referring to the work of Józef Robakowski – an artist concerned with the energy of the image, the construction of experience, biomechanical perception, transgression of forms and conventions, exploring, among other things, the relationship that is established between behavioural experimentation and expression and perception. And the memory of the eye and the devices that record and process images.
This five-channel video installation – Test Five for Józef Robakowski – alludes to Józef Robakowski’s 1971 film Test 1. The original Test 1 was made without the use of a camera – Robakowski punched round holes of various sizes in black film tape and added sound by scratching the soundtrack. The pioneering media production that resulted deals with the energy of light – the basic medium of film projection. It also deals with the phenomenon of perception: the juxtaposition of light and black in the film irritates the viewers’ optic nerves, causing subjective afterimages, which means the optical signal from the images on the tape loses its objective character when modulated by the dazzling light of the projector. At a 1974 experimental film festival in Knokke-Heist, Belgium, Robakowski heightened the effect of stunning the audience with the energy of light with a performance in which he stood on a ladder in front of the screen while Test 1 was being projected and used a mirror to reflect the beams of light into the audience.
The intensity of light in a video image is much lower than in a film, even if they are apparently identical. When viewed on a video monitor, as in Test 1, Robakowski’s work has a very different effect: It becomes primarily an animation composed of white dots on a black background. Thus it becomes a work about the migration of forms between two different media – film and video – an issue that is fundamental to contemporary visual culture. Test Five is also a musical composition arising from the random combining of sounds from five channels and the harmonies that emerge from that randomness. The installation’s title also alludes to Dave Brubeck’s 1959 jazz piece Take Five.