AND EADWEARD J. MUYBRIDGE
From May 6 to June 17, 2006. Opening on May 6 at 5:00 pm.
Études
The speed at which things move robs from our gaze any
chance it has of scrutinizing motion in successive states,
of observing the specific way things behave, of analysing
the kinematics of bodies and objects. With the invention
of photography, however, came a new epistemological
paradigm: one enabling the freeze-framing, if you will,
of our images of the world. Paradoxically, in an age
(the Industrial Revolution) when everything was moving
faster, we developed the ability to observe things slowed
down—an ability crucial to scientific study. Both
the photographs of Eadweard J. Muybridge and the video
installations of Henrik Håkansson invite us to
share in an experience of that ability. Their images
capture our gaze and provoke an unexpected vision of
time and motion.
Between 1877 and 1879 Muybridge famously set out to
prove the notion that all four of a galloping horse’s
hooves are sometimes aloft. With help from engineers,
he developed a system of multiple cameras that could
“dissect” a horse’s movements at full
gallop. His invention, chronophotography, gave us a
new tool for the study of human and animal locomotion
in enabling movements to be broken down and fixed as
individual, sequential images. Beginning in 1884, Muybridge,
by then employed at the University of Pennsylvania,
took thousands of such pictures of people and animals,
his subjects tripping shutters on a bank of cameras
one after the other. The motion thus captured is minimal,
sometimes difficult to perceive—a rift in the
temporal logic of the actions that unfolded. The twelve
plates brought together here—loaned by the Musée
d’art de Joliette—were part of this vast
undertaking, entitled Animal Locomotion.
The advent of photography, cinema and then video inarguably
transformed our ways of seeing the natural world. Before
we invented any of the technological devices we now
use to capture and amplify its images and sounds, we
observed nature directly, in real time. Today, such
recordings are unavoidable mediators of our relationships
to the world. The observation of nature and such processes
of mediation are at the core of Sweden-born Henrik Håkansson’s
artistic vision. He employs the methods of scientific
research—surveillance cameras, close-ups, slow
motion, absence of human intervention—to extend,
in time and space, an aural and visual experience of
the animal world. As we view them, however, we are reminded
of the distance separating us from these fascinating
spectacles.
This exhibition was made possible thanks to the collaboration of the Musée
d’art de Joliette and the Franco Noero
ème Gallery.
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