Why did the Bees leave?
Video-Sphere 2010
Edition 1/5
Video projection onto weather balloon
Variable size 1m - 4m ( 3ft - 12ft) diameters
Video: HD, 2:45min, loop
Choreography: Saori Tsukada
Audio Design: Asako Fujimoto
Exhibited at
Art Works for change's forthcoming international art installation, the nature of cities.
United Nations Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo
Volta Basel, Lightswitch, presented by Gallery Vernon
TINA B, Festival for Contemporary Art in Prague
The projected videos, shown on the surface of the weather balloons, consist of a bird's- eye view of seemingly anonymous crowds of people that begin to perform structured choreographies. As if under a microscope we can study them for meaning, we begin to see that they have formed letters and questions. The Video-spheres insert those questions into the DNA of the planets. These questions are combined with scenes, where the people become numbered parts of a enormous machine of synchronized movement.
The beginning of “Why did the Bees leave” is put together through a communication system Katja Loher calls Video-alphabet, which represents the synthesis of her ongoing exploration of language as featured in most of her works. Video-alphabet is a code where human figures, captured in specific poses, represent a series of symbols, which, in post-production, are assembled into letters of the alphabet with which the artist forms words and questions. Such questions are concise and basic, visually rendered with strong chromatics and understated metaphors, which, notwithstanding an apparent lightness, outline a dramatic statement against man and the world, he has set up.
A macro-image of the world slowly zooms in, initially showing a bird’s-eye view of a city. It continues to zoom onto a blossom tree in a park, ultimately landing on a close-up image of a fruit tree flower where a group of workers attend the work of bees, pollinating the flowers. Workers become part of a machine of a synchronized movement: they perform tasks that need to be done 24 hours a day to keep nature balanced to allow mankind to survive on our planet at its current numbers.
copyright katja loher
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