© 2010 ch-arts
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CHARLES SANDISON: RECEIVED TEXT
02.02.2006 - 02.04.2006
Centre pour l'image contemporaine
Saint-Gervais Genève
5, rue du Temple
CH - 1201 Genève
T: +41 22 908 20 60 F: +41 22 908 20 79
cic@sgg.ch
http://www.centreimage.ch/
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Tue-Sun:
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noon-6pm
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Charles Sandison, Heart of Darkness, 2005
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Charles Sandison is fascinated by all kinds of theories, be they biological, physical, medical, political, linguistic or other. His attention is particularly drawn to the communication systems they establish and the powers they put in place. Seizing on these theories, he writes a computer program that simulates their application and offers us an in-depth reflection on the territorialization of knowledge and power.
Sandison’s works look like this: Generated by a computer program, words or signs are projected in a darkened location. These move about individually or in groups, chase one another, organize themselves into patterns, wage war among themselves, absorb, stimulate and reject each other, are transformed, and cluster, forever redrawing the borders of a territory where the connections are constantly renewed. The works are installed on site and both adapt to the venue’s architecture and sculpt its space at the same time as the traces of light hug any surface they encounter.
Viewers are invited to immerse themselves in the darkness and wander among the words and signs, serving for the occasion as a surface for the projection. Over and over they recompose phrases by filling in the blanks with verbs, or dream up improbable connections, or even let themselves be swept away by the pleasing ballet of light beams and captivated by the strategic movements of these signs. Submerged though not absorbed, they perform different linguistic operations, from the metaphorical to the concrete, and by turns experience these words as objects, traces of light, or even signifiers; they observe the advancement, and hence the influence or dominance, of some words at the expense of others, or interpret them according to their own personal codes.
Despite a simplicity that seems to polarize or caricature connections, the words (good, evil, love, hate, male, female, etc.) construct infinite networks of meaning, which the mind criticizes but which the imagination seizes upon to make them visible in one’s inner world.
Technology and the precision of the program are ultimately in the service of a poetic enterprise: "Sometimes I try to visualize the journey of a word as it leaves the lips of a speaker and moves towards a listener, or imagine, when standing in a public library, that all the books are quietly talking. the vision that occurs in my mind is that of a vast flock of birds, which seem to move chaotically yet somehow, manage not to collide.
Physical space and the void between the words stand in for pronouns and verbs. I use this articulation between meaning, words, and in between spaces as a way to escape the authoritarian power of language." Charles Sandison
Isabelle Aeby Papaloizos
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