The Dead :: 5 Anamorphoses

ALEXANDER HAHN

electronic media artist

5 ANAMORPHOSES :: THE DEAD

(2002, loop, 5 SD videos, 21” TV monitors, mirrored cylinders, pedestals, directional speakers, dimensions variable, site specific

Collection Musée Jenisch, Vevey, Switzerland)

The Dead is an ongoing series of cylindric/anamorphic video reliquaries honoring people whom I have once recorded and who have since passed away, this first installment presenting my grandmother Ida Groebli, Telly Savallas, Robert Fischer, Harry Wergles, Julius Lubicz-Lisowski.

Conceived as a posthumous group portrait and presented on upward facing flatscreen monitors with a cylindric mirror placed in the center. The videos are geometrically distorted, but in the cylindric reflection, the original likeness becomes recognizable again. The mirror not only acts as the key to decipher the coded form of the 2-dimensional video but allows the viewer to walk around the image, creating the illusion of the luminous apparitions literally rising from their electromagnetic grave. Loop and cylindrical anamorphosis suggest the utopian possibility of eternal preservation, reminiscent of Morel's Invention by Bioy Casares or Raymond Roussel's Locus Solus, where the dead continually act out a pivotal incident in their lives. Though no doubt presumptuous, in The Dead, that would be the fleeting moment of our chance encounter.

Installation documentation from the exhibition Alexander Hahn: Werke 1976 - 2006 at the Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Jan 20, 2007 – Apr 09, 2007