'Multichannel Mosaics from two journeys in Zurich'.

This July two walks were made in two very different streets in Zurich, one in the centre of the City, a very cosmopolitian and somewhat infamous neighbourhood; the other on the very outskirts in a seemingly quiet, surburban street. A group of eight people were asked to walk together along both streets,each person recording a particular aspect of the reality they encounted, using different means for making an encoding of what they saw or heard. Thus one person recorded the ground walked upon, using a snappy camera with colour film; the participant looking at people and their personal objects, used a Super 8 film camera; personal signs of expression, was documented by another participant with a video camera; while the atmosphere was noted down by pen in a writing book; and the fabric of buildings was documented through making rubbings with pencil and paper, etc.

The multiplicity of means of reoording reality parallelled the idea of the random and multi-channel encounter we all implicitly make with reality in any street that we care to walk down. Though here the specific selection of the two streets; Langstrasse, and Hizenbachstrasse in Schwammendingen was to show that contextual and contrasting languages jostle,simultaneously, side by side within that embodiment of cultural unviversality and certainty,- the modern city.

From the two walks I received highly disparate and personally relative information from participants. To hold and order this information I have made a sequence of 'concept frames' each comprising eight areas of focus, dedicated to presenting information from one of the documentations of reality made by the group.i.e. the sound we walk upon, atmospheric conditions, institutional signs etc. Each concept frame represents a moment in the two walks, from entry to exit and is built from whatever information was recorded at that point, contrasting individual items from the two locations, in each of the categories recorded.

The form of the concept frames is a multi-channel wall mosaic, in which all displayed information is given equal presentation. Thus it is through the active engagement of the viewer in creating their own relationships, and constructing their own meaning with the highly diverse fragments of information presented that the work parallels, in a symbolic sense, the action of walking in any street. Though here information from two contrasting streets is presented so that the viewer can imagine another street, the one that they can self-construct.

The referencing of the work to two areas in Zurich is important, in giving the work a realm of meaning that connects it to the 'actual' world surrounding the gallery space. Thus another reason for selecting the two streets where the walks were made, was because they would be well known as polemical neighbourhoods to people living in Zurich, as well as acting as sterotypes of the 'modern city' on general.

mehr...