Das Fenster (2013-2014)

Das Fenster (2012-2013) focuses on the view onto the world from Hitler’s house, the Berghof, situated in Obersalzberg. The house had that famous four-by-eight-meter large window. The window’s monstrous scale and the view it offered on the mountains were aptly commensurate with the delusion of world domination. Due to its immense size this "cut-out", with its perfectly presented outlook onto the Untersberg mountain formation, implied a view over the entire earth. Untersberg is considered a place highly imbued with mythological and historical significance, particularly in its association with Friedrich Barbarossa, who unified the first Reich.

Since the Berghof had been leveled at the beginning of the 1950s, I used filmic means to "reconstruct" the exact site once framed by the window. I discovered that the former window had an aspect ratio closely matching that of cinema widescreen (1.85:1). The window was graduated into ninety subdivisions that were combined into ten greater divisions of the same proportion, each division closely fitting the single frame ratio of analogue film (3:4).

Therefore that in the realization of the film installation the analogue projections has been combined with the life size digital projection. The analogue film loop projection marking the boundaries of the frame ratio of analogue film, showing how the film format fitting with the original window divisions. This hand colored film made out of vivid “psychedelic” colors referring to Hitler’s amphetamine addiction.

The window served as a viewing-machine and the great hall may rightly be called the apparatus of a systematically arranged spectacle.

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Tautology

In the initial scene of the film, the images that are projected on three walls of a room issue from three digital projectors, rather than one. The increased number of projectors is in reference to the spatial dimension bounded by planes, as well as to the visual and spatial relationships accumulated by the recordings. By virtue of the fact that each of the walls shown in the film also serves as a projection surface, and as a consequence of our ability to shift our gaze from one projection surface to the next, a more complex relationship develops around the connection between space, picture and time. The illusion of the encompassing space filters into the encoded white squares, creating a tautological sign, in which the image of the film shows the place of the recorded image in space. A co-ordinate system marking the relations between picture and space gradually develops, which, through the showing of newer and newer recordings, multiplies the repeated projection of movement resulting from the repeated projection of recordings surveying the picture and the surrounding space. The projection of the projections’ projection is shown in a complex system produced by repetition, as well as by the movements described in it. The image moves in the space – in the space of the projection of always newly recorded recordings. This accumulative process refers back to the common origin of representation and the impossibility of representation. Space affects the picture, and vice versa; the vectors re-generate each other.

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Ontology-Process

The project “Ontology” is based on an empty film-loop, which is supported by spools to roll around a certain trajectory. The empty film passing through the projector is transformed as if into an image of light, but may also be regarded as a particular signal-lacking image of the abstract. In a manner of speaking, here the pure film's material is transformed into image.

Filming the movie that vibrates as a signal of light, and then re-filming the projection from this, gives the object of the film: itself, in which the relation of image and space becomes the story of the movie. Thus, the camera records the projector and, at the same time, the associated film-loop. In the self-reflecting programme, every new scene re-generates the image of the image of the image.

One of the major differences between analogue and digital movies is that the digital process leaves no evidence of a physical nature: its appearance is a type of coded signal, of which the functioning cannot be recorded on film.

It is perhaps worth mentioning that for the making of the film, a digital, rather than an analogue technique was used, and the scenes were cropped together with editing tools. Thus, not a real, but an imaginary version of the picture was realised.

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Blow-up

I filmed and photographed a location that might suggest the original park scene of Michelangelo Antonioni’s movie, Blow-Up. In a night scene the camera panes across a garden, which was partly manipulated by painting the vegation and lighting it up, to eventually look real on a black-and-white negative. The color images showing the real situation apparently seem unreal, but by turning the images into black-and-white negative the repainted segment of the garden shows up as a daytime real image. Actually the night is the negative of daytime.

To put this element in the film invisibly, the camera zooms into the night sky where the image is slowly transferred to black-and-white negative. As the sky is getting lighter and eventually white, one gets the impression of experiencing the break of day. Then the image slowly moves backwards from the sky and the negative black-and-white picture looks like representing the same scene at daytime. By showing manipulated and unmanipulated scenes of the location paralely in color and black-and-white negative, confusean arises about what is real and unreal in this scene, and in general question arises towards the representation of reality.

In Antonioni’s movie we are witnessing the photographer’s struggle with the analogue pictures as he is getting closer to the unknown step by step, transposing the images back and forth between positive and negative. The metaphorical use of his film, the action of blowing up the pictures refers to the investigation and penetration into the image, to gainig access to the unknown and invisible.

The Colors of Black and White

The basic idea for this project came from my earlier work based on the principle of camera obscura. Similarly to transparency the ciba-chrome paper produces a direct, positive picture in color. By contrast, the direct exposure of black-and-white photographic paper yields a negative image.

On black-and-white paper the only way to circumvent this and to make sure that the resulting picture is in positive, reality has to be transformed to negative.

To achieve this, I have repainted a segment of reality in such a way that on black-and-white negative it appeared as a positive image. I have chosen for this purpose the corner of my studio. My intention was to emulate the effects of a black-and-white photograph; in other words, the tonality of the colors was very important, but I could use a great many colors to achieve the desired effect.

Two sharply contrasting colors may show up in a black-and-white photograph in perfectly identical tones. As a result of this, the color picture apparently looks like following no logical system at all, while the black-and-white negative gives the impression of a traditional black-and-white positive photograph. After I have finished repainting the scene, I started to execute the photographs in several versions. The works in color and black-and-white form a quasi-diptych. Spiritually inseparably connected, they complement each other in a logical context. One image interprets the other.

The optical illusion relates to information and communication methods incorporated in images. The dichotomy of the real sight and its optical imaging are part of the aesthetic approach to pictures. In the digital age, we have come a long way from the black-and-white relations of analogue images, even though the latter has left a deep mark on our ideas about the picture in general.

Fist of all the photographic work was executed with the technique of camera obscura. The image was exposed directly on photosensitive paper. The complete series contains three color and three black-and-white versions. Since they are all unique and due to the long exposure time, they vary in color and intensity. From the series 3/A and 3/B to be seen here.

Besides I have also completed two traditional, analog pictures with a technical camera. The color transparency and the black-and-white negative in eight by ten-inch format were both transferred to digital.

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Space monochrome

Curious experience is to observe when a flat is being vacated and put up for sale. The physical perception of empty space also offers a metaphoric representation of emptiness. The action of evacuation can be conceived as a form of abstraction: an attempt at reduction or at gaining space. Besides its phenomenological meaning, the empty space is also the geometrical location of abstraction.

The vacated flats become conceptual images set in the surrounding of window frames taking photographs of them is an attempt at the practice of making pictures.

To facilitate the physical perception of space, the small pictures taken with the help of a digital camera have demanded a larger format. However, in the enormously blown-up picture the pixels drift apart, creating white spaces without any information in between. In order to render visible the emptiness of the rooms and the vacancy of space, one needs to eliminate the void between the pixels.

It is possible to fill these empty spaces with the help of the latest picture-editing programs. It is important to note, however, that in this case we are not dealing with an imaging software system that allows us to achieve a desired effect through a series of modifications. The program used here runs automatically at the push of a single button, leaving no room for outside control.

With the help of a “cloning” technique, the program rebuilds the picture using the existing pixels. In the case of a tenfold magnification, there comes a moment when the cloned pixels outnumber the original ones. The resulting images create a curious feeling in more than one way, mainly because they, oddly enough, resemble pictures drawn or painted using traditional techniques. An analogy with multiple meaning is created between the photograph and the pictures reproducing the photograph.

Constructed view (2004)

The principal stages of the latest casting technique of the reinforced concrete are as follows: two large temporary walls are constructed of wood; arranged parallel, they are separated by the planned thickness of the future wall. A huge metal construction holds the temporary walls in place against the weight of the concrete. Metal pipes are used as traverse supports to hold together the resulting mold; these pipes will temporarily form part of the wall.

Once the concrete wall has hardened, all the metal pipes and the entire metal scaffolding are removed. One distinguishing feature of the resulting concrete wall is that the metal tubes leave behind a large number of holes, all arranged at the same height and separated by the same distance. The silence of grey concrete in the newly created space gives us the impression that the interior has been separated from the exterior, while in the hesitant dimness of the interior the image of the outside world is being projected onto the walls through the holes.

As one of the components of the architectural construction, this natural pinhole becomes the principal element of a camera obscura.

The projected image of the outside world is born simultaneously with the high-rise. The tubular nature of the holes follows from the thickness of the walls, with the result that the projected images, rather than being spread over the wall, are arranged in an almost regular circle on the opposite wall, side by side.

The single viewpoint replaced by an accumulation of perspectives, which set the picture in motion, so to speak. All determined by the building, the image is thus constructed is the result of an architectural construction. As a result, in addition to all the things it shows, a picture also conceals, in the sense that, being the image of the light projected into darkness, it can be conceived as the reduction of illumination.

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Permanent Daylight (2003)

When I first spotted the blindingly light greenhouses, sprawling to the size of an agricultural estate against a background like a landscape, the luminous field lit the entire night sky. This was light’s “no man’s land”: a perspective drawn by a supernatural force. In place of the horizon of the agricultural field, I saw the horizon of urbanisation, where the synthetic sunlight kept the plants growing during the night. In its own way, this was a concrete expression of Charles V boast that “the sun never sets on my kingdom”. In this never-ending cycle, energy is transformed into growth, and life is equated with light. This is the manufactured photosynthesis. I have linked this light-icon evoking the house with another analogy of a house: the mobile home, or caravan. Just as a mobile home has the connotation of transience through locomotion, a greenhouse cast in the architectonic form of a residential house is an expression of growth, the scene of permanent change. Although both allude to the house, neither of them is a house in the literal sense of the word. They both share the technological fatality associated with acceleration and speed. The symbolic representation of the house of ‘homo technicus’ appears sometimes as an agricultural estate and sometimes as the illusion of living one’s life close to nature. Beyond any real or metaphorical meaning it might have, a greenhouse fitted out with lamps is also a visual phenomenon, the otherworldly symbol of sunlight.

In order for a photographic image to come into being, one needs light. I read somewhere that by absorbing light; a photograph reduces the total amount of existing light present in the universe. Perhaps the function of a greenhouse, which appears to be the essence of light, is to make up for this loss by emitting light. The architectonic object is the light of a potential photograph, which carries within the spectacle its abstract image, as well. In other words, the light of the image becomes identical with the image of light. I could also say, that rather than producing photographs, I wanted to capture the light escaping from this universe. Hence, I came to the idea of using a mobile home both as an architectural analogy and as a device to capture light in the manner of a camera obscura. The mobile home became the exposition chamber, and also the site of photographic photosynthesis. The locomotive version of a house translated into the portability of the photographic apparatus. The low light-sensitivity of the paper, along with relatively long distance from the light source, extended the exposition time to a period of days. To operate the apparatus without interference, I devised an automatic exposure timing mechanism, which made my continuous presence inside the mobile home unnecessary. The mobile home gave a home to the picture of “light space”.

The paper functioned as a projection surface, where each day a certain quantity of light was added to the photograph in the making. According to the basic principle of the camera obscura: the image of external reality received through an aperture in a darkened boxlike device creates a kind of dimensional transit, whereby the two-dimensional representation of space becomes the synchronous image of both the projection and the recording.

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Liquid horizon (1998-2001)

The Atlantic Wall combines components of various kinds and functions, my attention was caught by the observation, control and command posts. With their softly curving edges, these forms were not only easy to make, but they anticipated the age of aerodynamics and are seemingly poised to take off at high with a design to overcome air resistance.

Their function is to aid visual observation. They feature a conspicuously protruding, often semi-circular facade. Set in homogeneous capsules of concrete with walls often half a meter thick, the narrow, arching line of the observation or firing hole suggests a negative incised form.

The ambience inside the building is dominated by the two-fold effect of submarine and tomb architecture; it is a geometry cast in concrete, the atmosphere of the space is a combination of fear and curiosity.

When I enter the observation area, the sight of a horizontal landscape bursting through the narrow slit completely blinds me. Squinting in the strong light, I feel the concrete weight of the darkness embrace me. It feels as if I am watching the outside world from inside a huge camera.(2) This is a picture of a vast desert of the yellow sand and the sea, with the sky constantly rolling onwards; all projected over the liquid horizon.

While walking along the shore, you are constantly overwhelmed by the exposure to the omnipresent elements and the sensation of the details of the landscape showering you from all directions. In the twilight of the bunker an infinite picture is formed, enveloped in the dark concrete frame. This is the essential formula of the landscape, it is an equation with another way of seeing. It is a geometrically constructed experience of infinity; almost as if the elongated view was not the landscape but its image.

Originally it was the bunker's architectonic form that aroused my interest. But by looking out from the inside I discovered the possibility to produce an image inherent in this location.(3) The idea developed that by turning the bunker's interior into a Camera Obscura the bunker itself could be able to take a picture of the landscape, the observation of which had been its designated function. Close up and far away, this is the only architecture that establishes a functional connection between the landscape and the architectonic structure.

The idea developed that by turning the bunker's interior into a Camera Obscura the bunker itself could be able to take a picture of the landscape, the observation of which had been its designated function.

A camera produces an image in a split second; a Camera Obscura might need anything up to much longer to do the same. In this case, using Cibachrome paper, the exposure time grew to sometime between 4 to 6 hours. This produced a perfect combination of light and colour, extended in both space and time. The circumstances around the bunkers, the capricious weather conditions and sometimes the lively presence of bathers form a continuous element of the picture in the making.

However, the long exposure softens the harshness of nature, making rapidly changing events into insignificant details. But in the end these do not appear to form part of the picture. The apparent tranquillity of the pictures suggests that they are reflections of the landscape's fundamental presence. At the same time, there is a sense of tension of the things that have disappeared; the aesthetic of the void; the process of blurring; of changes, of space emptying out, of the landscape becoming a picture.

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Dimensional study

The confrontation of dimensions offers a number of possibilities; by selecting the dimensional boundary between the plane (2D) and the space (3D) for his subject-matter, Gabor Ösz chose this confrontation to be the basis of his piece, which we might even descrube as a dimensional minimal program.

In Gabor Ösz’s video work the abstract model of geometry is represented by a real-life surrounding. He chose the simplest, and also the handiest, element of the human habitation: the corner.

The corner –when taking the geometrical approach to the human habitat- is none other than the home version of a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system.

The abstract notions of plane and space are represented by the corner, as walls and intersection of the wall. At the intersection of the axes we find the origin, the starting point in reference to wich the position of every element in the coordinate system is defined. The space limited by the walls provides a fundamental division of the world, separating the without from the within and, in a mental sence, the private from the public.

The wall and the picture are inseparable notions. This is a multi-layered intertwinement, in wich you can have pictures hung on walls and walls turned into pictures (frescoes), but in the light of monochrome painting you can even look upon it as a case of pure monochrome.

However, regarding the relationship of corner and picture, it was Malevich who provided the most enlightening example with his “Black Square”. He hang this picture in the top corner of the room, in the place where the icons were hung in Russian flats-setting an obvious message for every Russian. The program of non-objectiv painting eliminated the visual representation of three dimensions, the illusion. The break with objectivism amounted to the dismissal of an extraneous dimension, at the same time entailing the search for a higher dimension in a spiritual sence. Paradoxically, however the location where all this takes place is the corner, in attribute of spatiality.

In Gabor Ösz’s video the location is the same as in Malevich’s case: the top corner. The task of reducing the dimensions is achieved in an unusual manner: the artist separates the factors, which up till then seem to have lived in perfect harmony, thus making a video recording of double coding, simultaneously filming the wall and corner. The viewers should be told of the circumstances of recording, as this is essential in the generation of meaning.

Employing the basic technique of recording, Ösz was shooting the scenes in a “casual” manner, from hand. This inevitably meant an unsteady camera movement. He tired to make a recording of the plane of the wall in such a way that only the plane was captured, so as to have the picture cropping coinciding with the axes, the intersection of the planes. He made sure that the left-hand and the top edge of the picture accurately follow the corresponding edges of the walls, with all of the begining. In the sence of the picture semiotics this means that the two-dimensional wall and the video shot are both fundamentally two-dimensional, yet the virtual part of their virtually three-dimensional relationship is eliminated, leaving behind the dimensional analogy. The wall and the picture stay in the same dimension. A plane is linked to another plane. But since the hand-held camera cannot be kept steady, the “fundamental axes” and the video coordinates keep sliding apart, with the wall occasionally phasing into the corner and the space frequently bumping into plane. Illusion filters trought.

Detail from the catalogue text of Wall Monochrome (1998)
Attila Csörgö 1997.

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The Picture of Light (1995)

I took a picture of a light bulb. This picture was projected in life size on a backlit film and installed in a gallery.

The projection was made possible with the light bulb of the projector, showing the image of a light bulb.

This is as much an ontological as a tautological experiment that plays with the image and the meaning of light.

The light bulb of the projector lights up the space while showing a source of light.

As much as image, light has metaphorical meanings. In language light itself has the meaning of understanding as much as an image. Can you imagine? Our imagination consists of images.

But is an image of light really a photograph? Photography is the connection between light and picture. A technological image that is made out of the combinations of energy sources. This work refers to the almost banal physical and philosophical relations of light and picture.

The picture of the light bulb could be a sign, an irregular sign of light. The picture of light lights up the space and gives meaning to it. But if we disregard from the endless interpretations: then the picture of light could become an unpronounced image.

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