Filmform (est. 1950) is dedicated to preservation, promotion and worldwide distribution of experimental film and video art. Constantly expanding, the distribution catalogue spans from 1924 to the present, including works by Sweden’s most prominent artists and filmmakers, available to rent for public screenings and exhibitions as well as for educational purposes.
Visusomatic was shot in a laboratory for physical research. The object of interest is an ultra-high vacuum (UHV) system, which is used to clear the air out of small chambers in which various tests on substances take place. The atoms that constitute the walls of the UHV-system can only be studied at atomic level by the help of its own system. A similar relation applies for the pixels in the digital image and the computer driven device that keeps it alive and visible.
The two sequences illustrate the ballistics of two common ways of dealing with a problem or an idea. In the sequence called Approach the camera moves straight towards the object as deep and as close into the structure as possible. The movement is set towards the surface of the object and ends in the pixel of the video image. In Scrutinize the camera searches and scans the surface by following the form and structure of the object, trying to cover up as many angles as possible, making a lap round the machine.
Lars Siltberg was born 1968 in Stockholm where he lives and works. Siltberg works foremost with video. Recent commissions and exhibitions include: Extras, permanent photography- and videoinstallation at the University Collage of Film, Radio, Television and Theatre in Stockholm, Miro Foundation, Barcelona, Beauty of failure/failure of beauty by Harald Szeemann, Koldo Mitxelena Kulturene, San Sebastian, Effort by Juan Antonio Álvarez Reyes, 49:th Venice Biennale, Plateau of Humankind by Harald Szeemann and Milliken Gallery, Stockholm.
Siltberg’s works consists of researches within the broad field of human existence where an interest in psychological driving forces like willpower and cognitive needs is merged with physical challenges and bodily reconstructions. This is indicative of Lars Siltbergs analytic approach, his way of choosing a subject and studying it within the parameters of a strictly defined set of circumstances.
His method has been called artificial empiricism. The subject can be seen as the phenomenology of experience – the way in which we engage with the world through our senses. In Siltbergs work such an equilibrium can exist for just a fleeting moment. Whatever synthesis the artists aims for, his artificiall constructs cannot retain it. This gives his work the character of an infinite struggle. In the end this might be the best way of approaching it: as an attempt to investigate a set of empricial ”What if?” – questions imagined by the artist. After all, empiricism can be the method of advanced scientific (and in this case artistic) research – as well as the most basic form of human interaction with the world.
