Joseph David
Extase - Installation - 2009
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 11
Installation
he eye is the most obscene of all organs. in Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye, by psychical disjunction and then by generalization, the eye turns into a sexual organ, a sexual organ constantly on show. Both revealing and arousing obscene display, it derives from obscenity. Light also admits of such a dual movement. it at once "reveals" the obscene and is the obscene itself.
The installation: visitors enter a room plunged into darkness. two holes have been bored on each side of the box. it is penetrated through the first opening by a video-camera. in the second, a video projector (vP) is placed over the aperture. the video films the hotspot of the vP. the image is then promptly shown by the vP. viewers find themselves within the projected flow. As the video and the vP move about, the space of the room is occupied by a soundtrack. the noises created by the motion of the two machines have become a score. the installation is not interactive. the events occurring are scripted.
Intention: the installation seeks to align the operation of the mechanism of the eye with that of a kinetic device (cinema auditorium plus projector). the analogy is an attempt to investigate the formation of desire, the image of ecstasy, the mechanisms by which a mental image is formed.
The visitor in the darkened space of the installation finds himself confronted by an abstract image. He becomes a cog in the installation. His place lies between two machines. they try to spark an ecstatic process through optical and sound effects. But is the installation actually trying to cause this; or instead to question his place in the process or in the construction of the ecstatic phenomenon?
