Presentation and exhibition of the Instant Edition # 8 Werner Schrödl – 3200 Lumen
Opening on 2.12.2014 from 18 o’clock
The 3200 Lumen series consists of 4 photographs, two of which show lighthouses and two antenna systems. The title of the series indicates the height of the luminous flux with which Schrödl illuminated the objects, making them appear at night as during the day.
The original idea for this series came to Werner Schrödl in 2013 when he saw a video of a comet on the Internet that flew over Russia and scanned the dark landscape with its light, similar to a scanner.
Then, with the help of extremely powerful flashlights and light rockets, which are normally only used by the military or seafarers, the artist began to detach objects and people from the darkness of the night, like a sculptor a sculpture from the stone. The reason why he chose lighthouses and antennas is, besides aesthetic considerations, Schrödl’s generally critical attitude towards information sources of any kind. Whether it is news, light signals or other information: They always have one thing in common, namely the task of guiding, informing, influencing and controlling people.
Schrödl now wanted his photographs to take the function of a lighthouse to absurdity, because normally this light emits and is not illuminated. Apart from that, according to Schrödl, ” … most lighthouses have more or less lost their original function, because nowadays most navigators use GPS (Global Positioning System). If the GPS should fail, however, then such a lighthouse is essential for survival.”
Instead of specifying the place names of the places where the lighthouses are located, Schrödl has marked them with the respective coordinates, namely with their longitude or latitude.
He proceeds in a similar way with the antennas, which emit different frequencies in the short-, medium- or long-wave range due to their different design. According to Schrödl, these are, however, “…exclusively installations for civil purposes, which are or were used by the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, among others”. These frequencies in turn were then also used as titles for the respective recordings.
Text: Lucas Cuturi
Project Space Lucas Cuturi, Neustiftgasse 107/5, 1070 Vienna, Austria
