Thursday, March 26, 2009

LONG EXPOSURES - MICHAEL WESELY


9.8.2001 - 2.5.2003, The Museum of Modern Art, NY.




5.4.1997 - 3.6.1999, Postdamer Platz, Berlin.



5.4.1997 - 3.6.1999, Postdamer Platz, Berlin.

Mikhail Bakhtin used the term 'chronotope' for the spatio-temporal matrix governing the base condition of all narratives and other linguistic acts. It can be translated directly as 'space-time'. Bakhtin viewed time and space as equal and interdependent. One cannot exist without the other.
Wesely's photographs could be read as chronotopes - densely detailed landscapes that allow the viewer to interpret construction through space and time simultaneously, revealing their layeredness and interdependency. In the same vein, but employing different methods, the panoramas posted below allow the viewer to become immersed in the photograph, piecing their way through time and space. The interaction with the viewer employed in these and the discarding of formal photographic structures of linear-perspective/decisive moment is analogous with the growth of non-linear multi-perspectival film-making (link).