• Screening

KREISLAUF - PART V

Nicholas Mangan, Ancient Lights (2015)

Dates

  • Tu 30.08., 10:00–18:00
  • Th 01.09., 10:00–18:00
  • Fr 02.09., 10:00–18:00
  • Sa 03.09., 10:00–18:00
  • Su 04.09., 10:00–18:00

Language

  • English

Nicholas Mangan’s two-part video work Ancient Lights explores the energy-giving properties of the sun.

One of the videos comprises a montage of different filmic and imagistic sources related to the sun: footage of the Gemasolar plant near Seville, Spain; images of tree-rings taken at the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research at the University of Arizona, Tucson that are used to analyse sun spot activity throughout history; and Russian biophysicist Alexander Tchijevsky’s (1897-1964) chart that attempted to correlate sun spot activity in the eleven-year solar cycle with human activity. The other video shows high-speed, high-definition, digital film footage of a Mexican ten-peso coin spinning on its axis. This coin bears the image of Tonatiuh, the Aztec sun god, who also features in the Aztec calendar or Sun Stone, a circular diagrammatic sculpture from the early sixteenth century that outlines the ancient Aztec cosmogony.

In the context of Nature and State, Ancient Lights exemplifies ancient narratives of earthly existence and their recording, analysis, and perception through scientific domains.

In August and as part of Nature and State SKBB launches a new format: KREISLAUF.

The German expression KREISLAUF brings meanings of circulation, cycle, and circuit in relation to moving images and the display of them as a loop in an exhibition context. It also references nature’s cycle, the body’s and the transition of things.

As a series of weekly video programming located in Ersan Mondtag’s installation The Temple, KREISLAUF focuses a highly curated selection on geographies of transition, geo-subjective perspectives on global issues such as climate change, drought and drainage, with local references and glocal sensitivity. Within its focuses and critical lenses, KREISLAUF investigates forms and storytelling mostly through non-European, Asian Pacific and transnational connections and artistic perspectives on these geopolitical conflicts. Each week will feature a video piece, or two in conversation, unfolding questions from the exhibition.