The Seven Lights of Paul Chan

Objects of any kind are floating up to the sky , in a surreal ballet, while humans are falling precipitously from the sky.

Objects are rising graciously, decomposing themselves without any haste: cellular phones and I-Pods, bicycles, SUVs, railroad cars, glasses, TVs and computers, and their components are continuing their delicate way towards celestial realms. Human descending starts by resembling dead leaves, but soon it becomes something like a stone rain.

1st Light, the 16 minutes circular movie by Paul Chan, explores a crazy world on the edge of disintegration; the opposition between upwards and downwards as a surreal calm wrapping a cataclysm; grace and nightmare.

The movie is actually a computer animation, projected on the floor by a device hanged somewhere by the ceiling. I watched it at Hirshhorn: it is part of Realisms, an exhibition of short movies dedicated to the relation between reality and illusion.

It is a fascinating exhibition. You are passing from one room to another, each movie is in an endless loop and the whole exhibition seems to be an endless loop: with each movie you are deeper and deeper in a world of sands, the end appears to be nowhere.

Some of these movies are decomposed in successive parts that run simultaneously on three or four screens. The 1st Light of Chan is the only one projected on the floor.



Paul Chan authored seven such movies: the 7 Lights. Each one is a computer animation projected on the floor (one of them is projected on a wall and the floor), triangular or trapezoidal in shape: a cycle of day and night, sunrise to sunset, dialogs between light and shadow, inside and outside, slow and fast, order and chaos, edenic utopia and dystopic apocalypse. You can watch them all at this web site, as they were presented in an exhibition at New Museum, the shocking new art tower on Bowery Street in New York.

- New Museum on Bowery Street -

(Hirshhorn Museum)

(Contemporary Art)

(Filmofilia)