MORPHOLOGY OF A PRE-VIEW

2022|Series of six digital prints on textile, dimensions: six prints of 322 x 133 cm.

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Towards visual affect

Morphology of a Pre-view stems from my previous video work Reading Vito Acconci (2019). There, I engagee with Vito Acconci’s text [READ THIS WORD THEN READ THIS WORD] (1969) so, that I record my eye gaze as I am counting the letters of Acconci’s text. The video consists of the text that is gradually drawn over by an animated trace of my captured gaze, accompanied by the sound of my counting voice. 

Morphology of a Pre-view consists of six digital prints, each displaying an entire trace of a unique “reading/counting” session of Acconci’s text without showing the text itself. Making the invisible path of the gaze visible and rendering it into a still image, the work explores the resulting visual texture. What appears to the interpretative eye and reflective mind as an incomprehensible and abstract image might resonate in and with the viewer affectively, evoking their pre-cognitive state. Not because the image would depict recognizable and familiar shapes, relations or compositions, but rather because it displays the trace of a gaze that is very much in tune with the movement of the viewer’s gaze as they navigate the image. This strange familiarity and resonance might unveil the invisible morphology of the pre-cognitive gaze that becomes available to the viewer as they re-temporalize the drawn traces with their own meandering gaze. Morphology of a Pre-View is a part of artistic research project Reading Reading (2017-).