FROM PAST TO FUTURE, PASSING US LIKE GHOSTS

Binarity not only underlies every form of digitality, but commonly forms the key to every form of meaning production. To put it succinctly, (Western) thinking would be unthinkable without structuring pairs of terms and oppositions. FROM PAST TO FUTURE, PASSING US LIKE GHOSTS sets out a kind of sensual countervailing of such thinking – which in this case is composed in non-binary terms. The cinematic suite, made up of text inserts, multi-layered abstract animations and, last but not least, a highly complex soundtrack level, is designed to subvert binary codes: perception and, along with it, any form of decoding meaning are put to a phantasmal test by the modules positioned in relation to each other, literally driven up against a wall of the undecipherable.

The “ghosting” – the eerie shadow of every dichotomous system – starts on several levels. First, there is the text “The Simulated Either-Other” by Wera Hippesroither, which is divided into several individual inserts. Its horizon of meaning, the undermining of the opposition-driven generation of meaning, becomes more blurred and frayed from image to image. Numerous acoustic voice montages also contribute to this diffusion. All sorts of text-to-speech applications, whether in the form of phantom phrasing, vowel obfuscation, or other pareidolia (sensory illusion), are fed into the brittle flow of sound as recurring haunting elements. An electro-acoustic composition (“On Small Differences In Sensation”) by the musician Eric Frye forms a subtly intervening sound base that repeatedly slides into the stream, only to immediately withdraw again. And then there are the extremely condensed animations, which generate a veritable flickering inferno in their fine-grainedness: constructed according to complex plans, they create sometimes more, sometimes less finely contoured, but in any case highly delirious landscapes of perception. In interaction with the other components, they beguilingly present to the eyes (and ears) a nonsense excess that can no longer be resolved in binary terms. (Christian Höller)

Translation: John Wojtowicz