There was painting. There was painting, a means of subjective ocular transmission. There was painting, and then there was photography, which announced itself as a transparent mechanism of delivering images. There was photography, and then there were computers: the substance got in the way, landing us back in the arena of subjective ocular transmission.
We’d never left it. We made friends with the scanner, but in this intimacy there was an imperative to rebel, to use the tool disobediently.
We used this device, meant for mass reproduction, to make unreproducible images. One of us might have had a sip of green tea. One of us might have smoked a cigarette.
We want to step into the abstraction and make a home in the crisis of blue, red, and yellow, but we had already made the space by merely stepping into the room where the photographs were hung.
Blue is expensive, one of us might have said. The rectangle is expensive, one of us might have said. The rectangles rest against each other, making a space one could step into and inhabit.
Stripes are expensive. Blue against white is expensive. Bodies are expensive: this body is hidden in plain view, touching the intersection of fingers and image and device. This expensive body is reflected in the glass, drilled into the plexi. Blue is expensive and cracking. The ocean is pricey, too, but affixing it to the wall with foam is cheap. Text by Clara Lou on Charlotte Bonjour’s Vague Land.
