Public Places - Private Strangers

ALEXANDER HAHN

electronic media artist

PUBLIC SPACES - PRIVATE STRANGERS - TEMPORAL ATTRACTIONS

(2011, loops, various lengths, triptych, HD video, 3 flatscreen monitors, dimensions variable)

Two pendulum clocks hanging on the same wooden plank always swing synchronously. It doesn't matter how they started. "A strange sympathy" is what the Dutch physicist and astronomer Christiaan Huygens called this phenomenon. He discovered it in 1665, and to this day, it has been demonstrated in a wide variety of oscillation systems: e.g., in lasers, the vibration of air columns in organ pipes, and even in the human heartbeat.

In the triptych «Public Places - Private Strangers - Temporal Attraction», Alexander Hahn observes a human oscillation system with a hidden camera: two women standing next to him in the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, who, like him, are watching a video by Lynda Benglis. The artist has converted this recording into a triptych. In addition to the original view, it shows two enlarged sections, slowed down and played back in an endless loop moving back and forth.