12 may 2021, Manuela Klerkx
Emmanuel Van der Auwera | "We are here temporarily, but what we do is forever"
To be honest, I am immediately impressed by what I see and hear when I enter. There is a peculiar atmosphere that is a mixture between a TV studio, a gallery and a workplace. It will have to do with the images that can be seen on the large screens in the otherwise empty space, which range from animations with people on Bounty-like tropical islands to documentary fragments about current events. We walk past the videos and the video sculptures while Emmanuel Van der Auwera (1982, Belgium) talks about his art. Objective and to the point. Like a scientist who has to prove something. In fact, it is a bit like that in his case, because what he wants to show is that not much more of us will remain than archaeological materials, which we can also manipulate endlessly. In the long run, how do we know what was real and what wasn't?
He explains that the lady on that fictional tropical island can do all kinds of things that we are no longer allowed in the real world during lockdown. Actually she is freer than we are, she lives a life we would like to live ourselves. You could argue that virtual reality has superseded physical reality. Where exactly is the boundary between virtual and real reality? We are bombarded with images. Mostly terrible images from wars to young girls and boys committing suicide online and becoming "instant public celebrities". As if virtual life continues after death. We increasingly communicate with each other via screens. To what extent do we already live in a virtual world?
Emmanuel Van der Auwera, VideoSculpture XXII (White Noise), 2020, Harlan Levey Project.
Using images found on social media, Van der Auwera investigates the interaction between mass media and the public, or better still, questions the influence of image technology and media on our perception of the world. An earth-shattering fact such as a mass shooting has been in the news for a very short time, but it has a long-lasting disruptive effect on an entire community, on families, children and adults that lasts for years. And that is exactly what interests this artist: the question to what extent our perception and processing of facts is influenced by digital media and the resulting image formation. This is all the more interesting as advanced apps and other software allow us to better record and manipulate events. Be it legally or illegally.
With the formal rigor of a logician, Van der Auwera examines how images are constructed by intervening in the way they operate. His video sculptures are impressive in this context: installations consisting of moving (video) and still images (photography) projected on plexiglass panels supported by tripods that stand free in the space. These screens not only act as a carrier of the image, but are also as part of the final installation. Some footage can only be seen from a certain angle. The use of light and sound and the way in which you have to relate to the images give these video sculptures an extra dimension compared to looking at a flat screen.
Emmanuel Van der Auwera, Memento 26 (Tehran), 2020, Harlan Levey Project.
The diptych 'The Sky is on Fire' and 'The Death of K-9 CIGO' is a good example of the way Van der Auwera deals with the representation and the transmission of images in contemporary mass media. In 'The Sky is on Fire' he investigates the archaeological value of digital images by means of a virtual reconstruction of a fictional urban landscape. He made this film installation in Miami and is based on software allowing him to take photos by virtually rotating around an object, so that you can produce a perfect 3D rendering of it. This way he reconstructed a landscape that seems frozen in time.
By making images from various angles and perspectives, I create a reality of new images on top of the existing reality, as it were. Maybe that's all that will be left of us.
Emmanuel Van der Auwera, Not yet Titled (Maquette), 2021, Harlan Levey Project.
'The Death of K-9 CIGO' was created using Periscope, a live video streaming app which was popular few years back as it enabled people to communicate with anyone and anywhere in the world, simply by using their smartphone. After the Parkland High School shooting, in Florida in 2018, Van der Auwera used all the material that was streamed on Periscope – which usually automatically disappears after a short time - to see what the consequences of this disaster were for the immediate environment. The original recordings range from victims to relief workers and from visitors to the memorial meeting to accidental bystanders. All recordings together provide insight into the psychology and behaviour of people after a traumatic event. We even see how the shot police dog Cigo is taken to the coroner and welcomed as a hero.
So there was the tension on the one hand and the absurdity of people being killed as dogs and dogs being lauded as human beings on the other. A tragicomic situation.
