Technologia

Analix Forever

May 6 - June 21, 2014

Curator: Barbara Polla

 

Technologia is a luminous installation comprising 25 fixed or kinetic images that are projected with a quick and jerky rhythm on the surfaces of architectural buildings in big cities across the world, from Geneva to Doha and Toulouse. These circular images combine geometric shapes with motifs taken from Arabic and religious calligraphy.

 

Technologia is both an experiment and a reflection on cultural perceptions, significations and interactions, at the intersection of contemporary art and linguistics. The work questions our relation to the world by connecting images and architecture, contemporary art and calligraphy. The installation multiplies references and sources of inspiration; it is reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp’s circular rotoreliefs – machines that produced optical illusions by combining the techniques of optical art with those of the modern industrialized world. It also can be connected to Wittgenstein’s work on language-games that aimed to discover how significations emerge from usage and context. With Technologia, mounir fatmi invites the viewer to participate in an experiment, a serious game: what happens when Arab calligraphy meets contemporary art, and in a broader sense, when different cultures meet? In an almost etymological acceptation, the artwork’s title suggests it is also about the study of an art or a skill: the machine’s capacity to combine symbols and the viewer’s capacity to perceive them.

 

The result is a fascinating spectacle of constant compositions and combinations, a chaotic assemblage of colliding geometric images, yet with undeniable esthetic appeal. The images projected at stroboscopic speed challenge the viewer’s visual points of reference with their constant decentering. The low frequency sounds could compromise one’s sense of balance by affecting the inner ear. In spite of all this, these signs and symbols are consistently attractive to the eye and the ear. They tend to put the viewer in a hypnotic and meditative state where linguistic symbols, taken out of their context and of religious doctrine, are transformed into abstract motifs, elements of a new geometry and of a world – and our relation to it – that are constantly changing and renewing.

 

 

 

Studio Fatmi, September 2017