Generative media installation
Arrival uses Google Earth to a synchronous flights to the library from 16 directions relative to the orientation of the 16 screens of the gallery b. The Stuttgart City Library is in this case the centre of the world, which – like the proverbial to Rome – now all roads lead. Sounds natural in this work – and that doubled the Detournement – also Duchamp’s Redymades, by Marc Lee simply turning a company product into art.
Flight distance: 111 km (Distance between two latitude), flight duration: 6 minutes, flight altitude: 200 meters above ground.
Synchronous Google Earth flights to the library from 16 directions.
And the reference to Duchamp can be taken even further. Duchamp’s Redymades were an attempt to get out of the concept of art. He wanted to create, as he said, “works that are no longer works of art”.
Duchamp’s position is further radicalised in a legend about how and why he gave up making art in 1912. Marcel Duchamp, so the story goes, would have watched an aeroplane exhibition in 1912 in silence, only to say at the end: “Art is over. Who can make something better than these propellers?” Only to play chess from then on. So the legend goes.
Marc Lee takes a more hands-on approach here and doesn’t let himself be boxed in by technical gadgetry. No, he courageously approaches the propeller, starts it, enters the plane and forces it to move in his direction. An approach directly to the place of his exhibition.
Text: Johannes Auer
Example Screen Capture West to East (Strasbourg to Stuttgart)