To the Vision Machine
28:45 min, color, sound/silent, 2013
To the Vision Machine is the beginning of a larger work on the visual inscription's invisible center, on the picture as an internal object and its relation to vision and different imaging technologies. The work initiates a search for a code that would make vision redundant, a promised land which it cannot hope to enter. The starting point is the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, or more precisely: the detonation of the atomic bomb as a photographic event. The first atomic bomb created a flash that lasted one fifteenth of a millionth of a second. The light penetrated every building and shadows of objects and bodies were exposed and burned onto the city's surfaces. When bodies and objects turned to ash, their traces were left as unintentional monuments. But the detonation itself can only be witnessed at the expense of one's eyesight or life. The sound of the whistle and the scene at the end are from the film The Children of Hiroshima (Genbaku no ko, 1952), which shows the Peace Memorial Museum while under construction after the U.S. occupation had ended and it was allowed to remember the disaster again.
With support from the project Microhistory, Konstfack, Swedish Research Council.
Watch film:
https://vimeo.com/65577258
