Horizon
Hannah Todt
2018
Artist Statement
Horizon is a five channel video- and sound installation that thematizes the synchronism of space and time, aiming to make the parallelism of multiple presents experienceable. The video installation shows five different people pursuing everyday activities in five different countries, locations and time zones, displayed in parallel in five projections. Each of the five 45-minute sequences cuts a specific moment out of its temporal context, then combining it with the others in a new setting. In addition to myself the subjects shown are friends who I invited to participate in the project. The discrepancy between social and geographic space is underlined by the fact that the people in the videos do not know each other, giving rise to a web of relationships that remains open: a field of research that is expandable and changeable. The installation is accompanied by the self-published artist's book HORIZON (edition of 20), consisting of a handmade leporello and a 7" vinyl. The vinyl plays a 5 minute excerpt mix of the spaces combined as a shared soundscape.
Horizon shows the parallelism of the now, always existing, always surrounding us. The borders of human perception limit us as well as help us to filter the enormous amount of information we are exposed to everyday. The video work can be seen as an expanded photograph making it possible to visit a certain hour of the past over and over again, but always in relation to the present, the now. Unlike the visual part the 7" vinyl concentrates on the acoustic aspect of the work. What a photograph is for visual memory, a recording is for sound.
Artist Bio
Through my work as a visual artist and musician, the thematization of visual and acoustic perception mechanisms has a relevant impact on my work. The habit of unconsciously structuring reality and space is to be questioned by the idea that automated perception processes can be changed by means of complex connections. Technological advances and other globalization strategies are constantly changing the human perception of space, which is why social and physical space must be constantly redefined. My artistic practice looks at the human in relation to changing, reality-shaping parameters. The observation of these developments results in the sensitization for everyday encounters and invites to question anthropocentric spatial definitions.