exhibitions
ZBYNEK BALADRAN: Cognitive Maps
Assemblages Against Essences
video-installation, 10 stacks of A3 paper and HD video projection, 2009
The ten constantly changing images that are projected onto a surface made up of ten stacks of blank white paper, represent a dynamic map, as well as a projected model. As the individual images change, new patterns are formed, and then disappear, creating a sort of cosmological model through the ever newly appearing constellations of pictures and drawings. Never static, the overall picture is constantly changing. At times, it seems that the different images are completely random and independent of each other; at other times, they seem to create a pattern when viewed in sequence; and at other times, they all suddenly merge together and form one single, larger picture. The overall result is a mesmerizing assemblage of different images and maps of various dimensions that continually change their character and testimony over time. The identity of the assemblage, throughout all its varying levels and dimensions, is based on the singularity of this process.
Boundaries of Autonomy
audio-visual installation, 8 headphones and HD video projection, 2009
One-hundred-twenty-eight points make up the content of the contours of a diagram of the human body projected on the wall. One by one, the artist then proceeds to connect each of these individual points, using a pencil and ruler, to one central point, located at the bottom of the projection where the wall meets the floor. Leading out from this central point are eight long black wires, with headphones attached to the ends, which flow out onto the floor of the gallery in a ray pattern. On each headphone can be heard a reading from the book “The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control“ by Karl W. Deutsch (a prominent Czech-born social and political scientist, known for his quantitative methods and interest in formal system analysis and model thinking). This audio-visual installation is an exercise in defining representational models that describe the subjective perception of individuals, as well as our society as a whole. The diagram only becomes fully in momentum once the viewer, by putting on the headphones, finds themself physically connected to the drawing in the projection. The repeating gestures of connecting the individual body points to the lower central boundary point, which is the conduit from the screen into the space, and marks the border between the visual and the audio, fill the viewers’ minds.
