ManApparatus

Aïm Deüelle Lüski, Tohu, November 20, 2015

How does the tool, the instrument, change from an object to a work of art? How does it cancel itself (as an industrial object) and acquire new identity and meaning? Aim Deuelle Luski on the idea of ManApparatus and on the digi-image, following Matan Mittwoch’s show at the Dvir Gallery.

 

In Matan Mittwoch’s (b. 1982) first solo show, a Hasselblad camera is laid on its back (the film’s back), glued to the concrete floor two levels below-ground, capturing the  light coming from the skylight in the gallery’s roof. But instead of showing the image captured by the reflex mirror, the camera looks at whoever is looking at it, blocking its field of vision. Consequently, the credibility-being of the instrument, which enabled it to faithfully expose its exterior and display it as a picture, an image, is disrupted. This act of disruption opens a new time-space for the instrument, different from the historic and phenomenal time where it had existed. This is no longer time for observing outer space, for which purpose it had been created (as a special instrument made to NASA specifications), but political and technological time, signifying the moment of emergence of every new instrument, and the moment of its obsolescence, when a newer instrument, technology, or other political-economic matters appear. The instrument has lost its time, has been compressed into a different existence, where it has been found to be a useless object, transformed and buried in a different field, the art field marked on the gallery floor.
 
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