Video

Documentation · 1:40 min. · LAGE EGAL | Berlin | DE · 2016

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Site-specific · Scale variable · 1:00 min. · Silent

Whiteout is a meteorological phenomenon in which visibility and contrast are severely reduced by snow and subdued lighting conditions. The horizon disappears completely and there are no reference points at all, leaving the individual with a distorted orientation. Whiteout has been defined as: “A condition of diffuse light when no shadows are cast, due to a continuous white cloud layer appearing to merge with the white snow surface. No surface irregularities of the snow are visible, but a dark object may be clearly seen. There is no visible horizon”.
(Source: Wikipedia)

The video installation Whiteout is concerned with projected images that are reciprocally superimposed on one another. The images are projected from opposing sides onto a suspended piece of transparent paper. One projection mirrors and inverts the image of the other whereby the darker areas of the one image outshine the lighter areas of the other.

In this edition of the work, the filmed shadow of a free-floating architectonic form can be seen in the projection light. This arises from the miniature scale model of the connecting doorway where the work is installed. Both projections connect the fine motions of the filmed shadows on the walls of the exhibition space to the gentle backward and forward swaying motions of the transparent paper suspended between the projectors.

The precisely corresponding positive and negative forms shift continuously against one another making an exactly matching overlay seem like a vanishing point that is constantly in reach but never attainable.