Scateboarders
and Seascapes
Text
by Lily Fürstenow-Khositashvili
Photography
is the result of the dialogue between the author and the camera as
media theorist Vilém Flusser put it. Images are projections that in
our age of digital revolution turn each of us into obervers and
simultaneously authors of images that we can create by tipping
computer keybords and buttons operating respective softwares. In his
cycle of photographs entitled “When the Earth Seems to Be Light”
after the documentary with the same name that won the best
documentary film award at the Film Festival in Amsterdam earlier in
2015 photographer David Meskhi analyses the digital nature of image
projections.
The
documentary, initially based on the photographs by Meskhi of
skateboarders in picturesque urban land and seascapes is about
movement and the ability to project it in photography and on film
screen. Later when the film was ready he rephotographed the moving
images from the cinema screen. What we see in this cycle are the
photographic snapshots capturing free movement turned into moving
images turned into screenshots of the moving images of scateborders.
The result are reflections of light spots, camera lense reflections
merged with the rectangular outlines of the screens, doubling images
and multiplying repetitive projections frozen in front of the
spectators as separate film stills. The figures, city views and
seascapes are blurred, pixelled, they are everything but precise and
show overlapping surfaces of projections and double screens.
In
our age when contemporary technologies advertise themselves with the
ability to reproduce reality as true as possible with images rendered
as sharp as ever the attitude chosen by the artist is utterly
subversive putting into question the abilities of the digital
technologies. By reducing the forms and figures into blurred spots
scattered across the surfaces he reveals the nature of the image
consisting of separate colour pixels, innumerable colour dots and
particles that the cinematographic and photo projections are made of.
The
cinematographic motion akin to the universal motion is brought here
to a standstill in snapshots. The repetitive character of the
skateborders movements is emphasised by repetitive imagery and the
snapshots out of focus that simultaneously irritate the viewer and
intensify movement dynamics.
The
camera captures a particular city, a flickering moment in life, and a
specific time in history viewed through the eyes of youth who drift,
almost invisibly, through a landscape of crumbling architecture and
political protest. The subversivity of the youth is conveyed through
the formal language of the photographer portraying his protagonists.
His snapshots are made against the conventions of traditional image
representation, as if the artist works “against the apparatus”
critising it and testing the limits of the new media possibilities.
“WHEN
THE EARTH SEEMS TO BE LIGHT” is the winner of International
Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2015/ IDFA
Award for Best First
Appearance.
It
is a cinematic documentary by Salome Machaidze, Tamuna Karumidze and
David Meskhi produced by Zaza Rusadze. The Berlin premiere of the
film will take place in Kino Babylon on Friday January 13, 2017. The
film focuses on the modern youth, being lost searching for
non-existing spots of freedom in a post-Soviet Georgia. The cycle of
photos by David Meskhi, having the same title were exhibited at the
Tea Nili Art Space in Tbilisi earlier in 2016.
Georgia Today Berlin
e-merginG artistS
Torstrasse 208, 10115,
Berlin
lilykalanda@yahoo.co.uk
All texts and photos courtesy of
Georgia Today for e-merginG artistS Berlin