Curated by Marc Glöde

Robert Barry, Lothar Baumgarten, David Blamey, Marcel Broodthaers, Matthew Buckingham, David Bunn, Daniela Comani, Peter Downsbrough, Cerith Wyn Evans, Ceal Floyer, Andrea Geyer, Liam Gillick, Shumona Goel, Dan Graham, Tamar Guimaraes, Mischa Kuball, Hilary Lloyd, Mary Lucier, Anthony Mc Call, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Jonathan Monk, Dennis Oppenheim, Pablo Pijnappel, Wolfgang Plöger, Erik Schmidt, Billy Sullivan, Lisa Tan, Sofie Thorsen, Markus Wirthmann, Florian Zeyfang.

Cultuurcentrum Knokke-Heist, Belgium
March 29 - June 7, 2009

02. National Geographic (left and right slide 4 of 80)



DESCRIPTION

National Geographic (2009) is an installation consisting of two side-by-side slide projections, with a text component. The imagery in the piece is derived from a collection of magazines from the 1970's and 1980's. One projector shows a series of 80 frontal views of different images of mountains, clipped from the titular magazine. Alongside, another projection shows the clipping's corresponding back page, literalizing a passage from the front of the mountain to the back. The text relays an intimate and perhaps cinematic narrative, working with a movement from past to present, back and forth, and in between. The piece uses the nostalgic leanings of the medium to present a narrative about the artist's family history as it relates to a literal and metaphoric geography.

From the press release:

STILL / MOVING / STILL is the main exhibition of the festival. This exhibition aims to initiate a debate on the history and contemporary status of slide projection. Slides are well known to a large number of people, particularly within family circles. Millions of people can recall watching slide presentations in private settings, typically holiday snapshots or family histories. Through the development of digital imagery and the digital "slideshow" on the computer, slide projection has since been in a rapid decline. Today we often look back on slide projections and the surviving images with a certain sense of nostalgia. Over the past twenty years, there has been considerable debate about the role of projected images in art institutions. 'The image' has been strongly influenced by experimental film, cinematographic installations, digital photography, and light boxes. Within this context, one medium has until now escaped the attention of theoretical inquiry, namely that of slide projection. It is the goal of this exhibition to change this situation, and to show how this medium always has been (and still is) a vital contributor to this ongoing discussion. The historic dimensions together with the resurrection of a contemporary following, makes this exhibition not only a stimulating exercise, but also a very necessary one. That an experience as this takes place in Knokke-Heist, which is a place that has played an important role in the history of the photographic and cinematic image, offers an extra dimension to this exhibition. The collaboration between the curator and Knokke-Heist was the occasion for a rarely seen dynamic in Europe with respect to a medium that has received little attention until now.