http://www.katageibl.com/sisyphus/
Emma P sent me a useful reference – which I may well include in CS and/or BOW context. Geibl, like me, has played with entangled narratives from different points in time/place to explore the construction of reality today – her work, however, seems aesthetically far more ‘grown-up’ than mine. However, there are key differences and the statement (for me) somehow detracts from the work as it reiterates ideas that are fast becoming old questions as technology and science continue to develop apace. Having attempted a statement, I am only too aware of how difficult it is to convey the complexity of an idea in a clear and concise way, and presumably, Geibl is writing in a foreign language here which must make it doubly difficult (I can barely explain myself in English and it’s my only language!). Geibl’s statement says,
“How we used to think about the world is changing radically every day. Religion is replaced by science, we are flooded by images every day, we want instant access to knowledge. Photography as a medium has the ability to capture everything that’s in front of the camera, the machinery sees even what the human eye is not capable of. We can see universes, stars exploding, microscopic worlds, atom bomb detonation with the safety of the far distance. Through these images, we think we can get closer to understand how the world is functioning without ever experiencing or seeing it through our own eyes.
In series Sisyphus, I constructed an imaginary laboratory where it’s up to the reader to decide where the line lies between fiction and reality without any scientific explanation.” (2018)
Some statements worth investigating in these rough-thinking-as-I-type notes:
- ‘Photography as a medium has the ability to capture everything that’s in front of the camera’ – this could be accused of being a limited view of photography, one firmly connected to visual sight (I am aware many of my metaphors are too – so powerful within our culture is the idea of ‘sight’ dominating). Using code and AI, modern-day photography can creep around corners, peer beyond boundaries, make calculated guesses about things that are behind it, or the other side of a planet. It is no longer merely ‘photo’, light-based. The whole idea of ‘what we see’ vs. what is actually real is being investigated today – and Geibl creates a narrative which is suspicious of actors creating these untrustworthy realities. Traditional photography creates a boundary, in the same way painting also used to. It suggests the (limited) world is in front of the viewfinder and separate from it (rather than an entangled part of the process which leads the emergence of a manifestation we call ‘the view’)
- ‘the machinary sees what the human eye is not capable of’ (sic) – this is true and not true at the same time. Old photography equipment has less of a spectrum than any biological eye, as does the rendering equipment (printers, screens). So it sees less than we do – but its limitations lead to realities that somehow see more than reality, a hyperreality, i.e. expressionistic outputs that add to reality. Modern seeing machines decode and recode our perception of reality which is necessarily limited so that we can comprehend it – some contemporary views suggest, we are myopic creatures that have evolved to see/experience only what we need to see/experience in order to continue mating and surviving. Or rather see/experience in a way that is useful for our survival. The notion of photography (especially traditional) is the ultimate manifestation of a fixed view, of what we see being actual reality. Modern technology undermines that.
- ‘We can see universes, stars exploding, microscopic worlds, atom bomb detonation with the safety of the far distance’ Am reminded of Virilio (often am when looking at modern tech and reality) and time and space being on top of each other, life sped up exponentially. Technology condenses and collapses perception of spacetime (?) at the same time as fragmenting it – separating us from parts of ourselves, scattering individualism, dissolving the lines that kept it in a certain place. Fiction and ‘reality’ are entangled.
Having said all that, I really like the work. Visually, for me at any rate, its interesting, intriguing and aesthetically appealing. The concept, closely related to mine, seems like it misses something crucial and remains tied to slightly predictable questions – “Who is manipulating us? We can’t trust photography, who can we trust? Our visual media is untrustworthy.” Perhaps my own statement might say, “whether or not we can trust the things we see/experience to be true has in recent times very quickly become an irrelevant question. We all exist in an entanglement of varied realities – your reality and mine can never the same, but there will be meeting points – intersections and nodes consisting of common threads.” (…. etc, and something else besides.)
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