The grid is far from being semiotically
overloaded - it has been considered void of signifiers, a convenient escapist
apparatus evading narration and bias, and at some point even the modernist's
mighty bastion against meaning. Thus it's compatibility with the space the
originals for the prints have been drawn in, spaces Marc Auge calls a
non-place. We don't even think of lingering in them, for they are shaped for us
to pass: supermarkets, trains, places of transit, etc. - they are all everything
but welcoming and comfortable. Usually featuring aggravating lighting, hard
seats, bland decor and the like, some of them, such as airports, patronise us
heavily by forcing us to follow their rules to the letter. Needless to say that
non-places rather try to suppress than invite emotions.
Being at a non-place, many of us use
devices such as mobile phones or tablets, as they offer escape, create a border
to our surroundings and occupy us at the same time. Using both simultaneously,
a tablet with a sketchbook application to create drawings and a mobile phone
for conversations at her frequent train rides, the lines of the grids directly
correspond to her feelings at that moment, caused by the telephone conversation
she had. Drawing grids only, to me, seems to be another imposition echoing the
provisos of non-places.
Reminiscent of automatic drawing, as
far as the process is concerned, the result was much less mysterious as we
associate with this practice. At its advent, automatic drawing was for the most
part an occult practice. These days we dissect everything in order to extend
our already much greater knowledge and prefer a more rational approach and hard
facts for the most part. Instead of the `soul´ we examine our brains. Instead
of being puzzled by our bodily functions we are digging deeper and try to
manipulate them. The romantic, esoteric view of hypnosis is replaced by its
clinical usefulness, in addition we now know that it is a state we all slip
into several times a day. Mirroring sentiments she might not have expressed to
interlocutors but which she most certainly consciously experienced, mixed with
outer influences such as people passing, being forced to move or adjust ones
position, someone distracting her by making noise and numerous other incidents
that had an impact on the outcome, all elements become an aspect, employing the
fingers as the medium for the outlet, manifesting on the display, while she
transforms into an entity somewhere between mechanical movements and trance.
The tablet's sketchbook application is
sophisticated enough to react to the pressure of the finger sweeping over the
surface, enabling us to sense the intensity, rhythm and tone of the talk. This
finesse is also responsible for ever so slight glitches along some lines,
creating visual noise if the line has been drawn with a certain amount of force
and speed.
Having produced over a thousand of such
drawings, Marina Sula printed a selection on a bigger scale. Each print
actually misses one line, always a very clean and straight one, as she cut it
out, which becomes visible only after inspecting the print closely. This adds
another dimension and depth the very flat medium of print lacks, and which
tablets feature. The huge scale of the prints lets us grasp the infinity a tablet
display suggests, we can almost reach into the print. This perceived
three-dimensionality allows us to determine if lines are located on top or
underneath another one.
Arranging the drawings at a much later
point but identifying the conversations and the day they have happened by means
of recognising the emotional state depicted, the titles are equivalent to the
date they took place. The body of
work is something akin to a diary, but one that has to be deciphered in
hindsight. Which leads
us to the question if this undertaking could possibly be accurate, for memories
are not reliable. But perhaps this just applies for specific details, such as
words and everything else falling into the realm of the left brain half.
Sentiments seem not only to penetrate spaces they are supposed to keep out of,
they apparently also have a way of persisting.
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