Spacelength Thought
Rosa Barba
16 mm film, projector, typewriter
Germany 2012
Image above: Installation view at Kunsthaus Zürich, 2012
Photo: Jenny Ekholm © Rosa Barba
“Spacelength Thought continuously prints text on a 16-mm white film, and thus prints its own code, or decoded story. It’s an author, but the text production does not adapt to a human reading routine; it extends the production time of a single word or even a single letter in this case, but at the same time moves at the pace of the celluloid. The piece is a manic writer, driven by a powerful production energy, endlessly inscribing text into film. The text producer projects only fragments onto the wall – the whole text is only readable during the exhibition […]. Printed film remains and builds up on the floor – expanding and inviting you to follow the letters. The film-text is produced on location, seconds before it is projected onto the wall, so the process of writing is staged there, in the exhibition space.” (Rosa Barba 2013: 12)
Rosa Barba, born in 1972 in Agrigento, Italy, lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
More images
Images above: Installation view at Parra&Romero, Madrid, 2016
Photo: Roberto Ruiz © Rosa Barba
Reference
“Rosa Barba, in conversation with Mirjam Varadinis and Solveig Øvstebø,” in Rosa Barba: Time as Perspective, texts by Laurie Anderson et al. (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2013), pp. 8–99.
