Christian Friedrich
P/////AKT – platform for contemporary art , Amsterdam, Netherlands
How beautiful and calm our planet looks when viewed from outer space. Massive bodies of water dotted with land gently and silently pass through our field of vision. From yet a greater distance, the view is framed by a satellite’s window through which the globe looks even more abstract and otherworldly. But this is only the beginning of the latest film, Untitled (2011), by Christian Friedrich. What follows in the next half an hour is much less peaceful, as the satellite’s view (which the artist borrowed from the German Aerospace Centre), and the homemade footage of a young man playing in the ocean’s shallow waves rapidly alternate with each other as well as with their own negative, creating a strobe-like effect that forces its way into the viewer’s eye.
Friedrich’s slightly disturbing film lays bare the foundation of the moving image as a succession of still images, as well as the physical limitations of our vision. Because the eye is not adapted to seeing each image separately, an image that has already disappeared stays visible on our retina and consequently blurs with the new one being projected. Much like the visuals, the work’s loud and overpowering soundtrack (belonging to the filmed footage and edited simultaneously, creating an unsettling rhythm of computer-generated noise) resonates in your ear when it is no longer there, giving the silences in between the violent waves of sound a somewhat eerie quality. It becomes clear that what is being seen and heard is not actually there in the film at all, but rather is an afterthought of the brain, which is trying to catch up with what it has so forcefully been confronted with.
Still, there are occasional moments that show a captivating play of images, as the clouds that cover the globe seamlessly sync with the foam that floats over the wet sand of the beach. At one point, the setting suddenly changes and the camera moves up in a lift of a building that is reminiscent of an old futuristic movie. The strobe-like effect begins again as the camera moves through the water of an indoor swimming pool, the sound subdued to fit the new underwater setting. For a moment the camera rises above the water and everything seems normal. The view of a tranquil blue sky above rows of conifers makes us briefly forget the hostility of what has come before. The flashing images have stopped, the colours have returned to normal, the soundtrack is silent. The alternating images return in a final burst of visual rhythm before the film turns black.
Whereas in past solo presentations Friedrich flooded the viewer with dramatic and sexually-orientated visuals, often combining sculpture and video to create a total installation, it was a significant change that here he showed ‘just’ one untitled work. Regardless of the simplicity of this show, the artist was still able to ask some fundamental questions about our vision and the role and function of the image. Instead of making the physical world visible, he makes the boundaries of the visual physically present. Because the film cannot be seen properly without the shortcomings of the human eye, the body – and its ability to see – become both subject and object of the work, rendering obsolete one of the most basic distinctions in the history of art.
Irene de Craen
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