Diagrams of Transfer
Solo exhibition at Galleria Tiziana Di Caro, Naples
2019.11.30–2020.01.25
Lina Selander uses video and installation as her main work mediums. History, politics, and anthropological investigation are only some of the areas of interest within which she moves. The method Selander uses in her investigation is “archaeological” in the sense that she delves into reality to the point of highlighting human culture through the analysis of what typifies and surrounds it. In her works, footage mixes with unpublished and almost never narrative shots: through images that she carefully seeks and selects, Selander shows reality in a categorical manner and without intermediation.
The exhibition path opens with the installation Notes for a Film on Nature, created in 2016 and consisting of a projection on a photograph. The photograph shows a former courtroom currently used as an exhibition space. The video is shot from where the judge used to sit. The architecture of the courtroom is like a scenography with which the projection interferes more or less incisively, depending on the intensity of the lights in the image. Sequences of shots follow one another, centered on natural elements of different kinds: the flight of birds, the moon that covers a small portion of its orbit, the sea depths as well as its surface, representations of flowers, or the Earth. The result is a sequence of images which reflects on the very enigmatic boundary between nature and its representation.
In the second room, Selander’s two latest films, entitled Diagram of Transfer No.1 (2018) and Diagram of Transfer No.2 (2019), are showed. The films give the title to the exhibition and are , like many other projects in recent years, created together with Oscar Mangione.
Diagram of Transfer No.2 consists of a sequence of images shot using 16 mm film. The images that make up the video are varied: we see a sequence that includes the Great Wall of China, various landscapes, desolate interiors among which we recognize the control room of a never-used nuclear power station. Among these images there is also that of a panda, who paints on a sheet placed outside its cage, using a bamboo twig dipped in black paint. The panda is awarded a carrot for every stroke. Diagram of Transfer No.2 is about a relationship: the one between man, who is definitely an exploiter of nature, and nature itself, which has to witness the consequences of the exercise of power, the results of which will be at our expense.
In Diagram of Transfer No.1, the viewer’s attention is immediately captured by a noisy book-shredding machine. Some titles can be read just before the machine tears them apart. These sequences consist of alternating fleeting images, among which we detect the bust of the king of Uruk, a dove and a parrot, a 17th century engraving, some children dancing and others drawing, and a motionless Ouroboros in a guillotine. It is a sequence of subjects that have no apparent connection, but that together make up a kaleidoscopic universe of suggestions linked to reality and history. The images of the ripped-up books contrast with the attempt to put back together fragments of paper. Suddenly, the cover of The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (Discours de la servitude volontaire ou le Contr’un) by Étienne de La Boétie appears, a famous essay that revolves around the idea that a tyrant exercises power only because the people allow him to, and in the context of the film, this can be read as a warning against taking advantage of the greatness of nature and its countless possibilities.
In the last room, there is a 2019 installation entitled The Weight of Images, first exhibited in the UK, at the National Holocaust Centre and Museum (NHCM). The work consists of a table placed on a mirror, which reflects a projection whose source is on the underside of the table. In the video, images flowing very slowly follow one another. Some are taken from photo albums: they are quotations of varying intensity relating to the Holocaust, often not shown fully but only in fragments. Some of the photos were shot in the gas chambers. The Weight of Images is a work on memory and how it is preserved over time or conditioned by it. The Gorgon Medusa, who has the power to petrify, is mentioned several times. If we stopped contemplating the story (and in this case Selander leads us to contemplate it through images) we would risk meeting Medusa’s gaze, petrifying our consciousness and crystallizing memory.
The works in the exhibition, as always in Lina Selander’s work, can be seen as models of thought through which to explore and analyze ideas, examining the relationships between memory and perception.
Photo: Danilo Donzelli
