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Francisco Ruiz Infante Languages Room (Bestiarium No.2)
In the exhibition room there are ten tables which have been put into three groups, around which 14 chairs stand in no apparent order. Within these groups there are three monitors covered by large sheets of milk glass, and underneath each glass a monitor has been installed with the screens facing upward. The frosted glass, which covers the screen, causes the pictures to be slightly out of focus, but if one looks closely at the video picture, then it is possible to recognize a close-up of a face: It’s like a scene in a bathroom; sometimes the person may be seen brushing his teeth, rubbing his tongue, or even sometimes fogging up the sheet of glass with his breath. Two wall-sized pictures are projected upon two opposite walls of the room, upon which close-up photos of various animals may be seen in quick succession. By slightly manipulating digitally the speed of the individual details, the animals move their bodies and mouths simultaneously and emit a series of strange sounds, evoking the feeling that these animals can speak. The system of sounds which arises from this procedure may be perceived in various ways: the effect may be ironic, dramatic, funny, and violent at the same time. This ensemble of noises is rounded out with a further, complex addition of sounds. These are attempts at translation, lending this unusual „assembly room" further possible levels of meaning. From the ceiling there hang 14 sets of headphones which complete the installation. If one takes a seat on one of the chairs and dons a set of headphones, one can hear a simultaneous translation of all of the sounds, thus becoming witness to the strange „animal-like conversation". The special thing about these headphones is that four of them translate the text into Spanish, three into English, three into French, and three into German. The translation seems curiously chopped, however, consisting of sentences strung together in a monotone. Thus the visitors can opt for a language they understand, but they will only hear a new series of noises, in this case, human in nature. Like the animal noises, these articulations do not make any more sense than what the individual imagination can make of them. SOUND AND LANGUAGE Basic elements of the installation Departing from my experience with the video work „Los Lobos" („The Wolves"), I have become increasingly interested in the construction of sound rooms with „conversation" as their topic, but which distance themselves from conversation by introducing sounds that are not clearly coded as language (sounds, grunts, false morse codes, unusual signals ...). In addition, while constructing my texts I have begun to layer several languages in order to very consciously fragment any possible understanding of speech. The possible ways of interpreting this are thus multiplied and the tonal character of languages is emphasized. It is obvious that the listener will feel helpless considering such an accumulation of languages. I want to avoid the impression that the installation is meant as something formal concerning content. And since I would like for the viewer to be conscious of the complexity of simple communication in today’s world, I decided at the beginning of the project to introduce an „aid to understanding". As an aid to understanding the manipulated language I employed the classical system of „subtitles" for my single-channel videos. But in this „Languages Room" I preferred a system which is used in simultaneous translating: the possibility of listening to a monotonous voice, which decodes the sense of what is said by lending it a linear structure. It is a voice which in a certain way explains the sense (since it supplies the coordinates of meaning of the words), but at the same time makes it more complicated (since it extinguishes any strongly expressive traces of tonal speech). The visitor has the choice of noting the sense of the text or of letting himself be led intuitively by the sounds, therefore filling the installation with open meanings. F. Ruiz de Infante (December 1997) email: Axel Wirths, Kurator |
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and copyright by kunst- und ausstellungshalle der bundesrepublik
deutschland
