AUTOMATIE

AUTOMATIE is an installation comprising a three-channel video and a wobbly chair. The videos show three perspectives on the same event: a device that rotates around a double-flamed candle, lighting one side whilst extinguishing the other. With each change, a person appears in the light and disappears back into the shadows. ‘Burning a candle at both ends’ generally means overexerting oneself – using one’s own resources intensively, but only for a short time, without thinking of the future. In the work, however, the ends of the candles burn alternately, almost like a clockwork mechanism whose rhythm keeps falling out of sync. On the sound level, it sounds as if one were sitting right in the middle of this clockwork mechanism. Time is narrated here not linearly, but cyclically – a constant coming and going, fragile, precious and at the same time endless and repeatable: a moment can be both beginning and end. In the room itself stands a chair that rocks back and forth on its back legs. A balancing act or impatient waiting? The installation invites us to experience time as a constantly shifting moment: earlier, later, earlier again – and yet never quite predictable.