The Extension of Images
Hannes Schüpbach
translated by Elizabeth Tucker
In a strange way, the projection of Camera Solaris (2008) by Ruth Anderwald and Leonhard Grond produces the impression of an autonomous event. With a simpler film appearing on the wall, the pulse of the projection concentrates the eye, entirely captivates and draws it into the moving image. By contrast, Camera Solaris causes a wandering attentiveness, a gaze that, in the entire space of the installation, repeatedly moves from one plane to the next. None of the elements stands only for itself; each can be traced back or related to an additional one. This transitional movement leads from the projected film and its objects to the projector, to the light bulb, to the film strip, and from there back to the projection screen. Then, too, to the flecks of light cast through pinpricks in this screen—a mounted sheet of paper—onto the wall beyond it. While the electrified drama of Camera Solaris unfolds, another indissoluble constellation enters our consciousness: how seeing is based on light and the illuminated object, but also on an inner presence; how this in turn receives its changing contour as the counterpart to something seen.
The film circulates a sequence of well-considered images (black and white, with quick, accentuated cuts, sometimes upside down or running backwards, repeated in a loop—which strengthens the impression of being spatially transported, of an autonomous event, and of inwardness)