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A site-specific camera obscura installation -
Shown
at an exhibit, Junk Is Back/La Spazzatura e Tornata at Ex
Colonia, Ballabio in Lecco, Italy
June 24-26, 2005
Four infirmary
rooms of the old “ex-colonia” building (which
was used as a summer camp during Mussolini era) were turned
into large camera obscuras. The scenic view of the Northern
Italian village outside of the building; rocky mountains,
open sky, lush trees, and houses were projected inside of
the room.
Transparent,
dreamlike quality of the moving images projected upside-down
in the darkened room meant to evoke the ghosts of the sick
children's memories. They were the bedridden children’s
longing to go outside to play.
The images
were projected by simple means of blacking out the room by
storm window and cardboard then allowing a little light to
pass through tiny holes. Pre-existing holes on the storm windows
were also used as is or slightly controlled to enhance the
images projected on the walls and other objects in the rooms.
Camera
obscura (dark room for Latin) is basically
a large pinhole lens camera, a direct ancestor of cameras
today. This is how our eyes work as well, thus the camera
obscura is suitable as a metaphor for how we perceive the
outside world. |
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Changes
moment by moment
As the sun
moves across the sky, the light passing through the holes
of each room dramatically changes the images projected on
the interior of the rooms. The climax of the installation
is the sunset over the mountain projected upside-down on
the third room. As one sits in the room, one can observe
the sun silently travelling among the silky shining clouds
across the sky on the wall then finally drops behind the
shadow of the mountain.
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Video
projection and children’s voices
In the first
room, a video image of green leaves and sky shot from below
the trees at the neighborhood park was projected inside
of a small bedside cupboard by the hospital beds. The image
slowly shifts up and down like the breathing motion of a
child laying down on the bed looking up at the tree. The
sound of children playing up at the park was also played
along with the video.
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| Childhood
memory
Camera
obscura has been always related to childhood experience to
Etani.
"When
I was a child, our family used to visit a summer house in
a mountain once a year. One summer day when we just arrived
the house, the whole house was dark because all the storm
windows were closed. But as soon as me and my sister walked
inside of a room, we were captured by a small glowing image
on the shoji paper window. It was a projection of the outside
world; far away mountains, green trees, and blue summer sky
all upside down. A woodpecker left a whole on the wooden storm
window and the light was passing through it. The silently
waving trees in wind and moving clouds were so magical. It
was so tangible because it was a small projection on an object,
yet it was so intangible because it was an illusion created
by light. We were as if looking back at the image of the present
moment as a past memory."
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| Exhibition
June
24-26, 2005: Junk Is
Back/La Spazzatura e Tornata at Ex Colonia, Ballabio in Lecco,
Italy
This
project is a result of Due Settimane/Two Weeks residency,
between June 24 and July 10, 2005. The residency was a joint
project of School of Art, Carnegie Mellon University and Accademia
di Belle Arti di Brera - Milano. |
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