I visited the Bienal in Contemporary
İstanbul and chose that work named A World Undone by Nicholas Mangan in 2012.In
this work, the artist uses sculptures and slow motion movie. I will try to
highlight the movie part of this job. In the movie used technique is slow
motion shots. In the whole work, this movie is like trying to strengthen the
power of sculptures in a more vivid and concrete way while demonstrating his
concern.
If we begin with biography of
the artist to have a deeper analysis, he was born in Geelong, 1979 and still lives and works in Melbourne,Australia.He
is interested in both history&science. Especially good at forming meaning from objects, culture and natural phenomena.
In the first place, he is a sculpture but he works with many other type of
arts. But in every type of arts, he adresses
the themes including colonialism, humanity’s awkward relationship with natural environment
and complex dynamics of the global political economy.
If we link that biography with Mangan’s
“A World Undone’’ work, there are lots of similarities. Firstly, we may
attribute this work to humanity’s fake relationship with natural environment.
He targets the discovery of zircon crystal in Jack Hills, a remote area of
western Australia which is known as one of the oldest place in earth, & the
inhumane attacks of humanity to this important mine. Although we are all
natural creatures living in a natural atmosphere, we all treat nature inhumanely.
Instead of preserving the natural life, we are damaging it with our commercial interests
and greedy instincts. So in this work Mangan works with some metophorical
issues.While constituting this work, he captures crushed geological matter from
Jack Hills in airborne flux. This is the real part captured by camera and being
showed in slow motion.But we may find
some similiarities with meteorite showers and cosmic dust during the scenes,
which is able to be observed also in my short record located above.The metaphoric
illustration comes with a conflict. Here
the artist tries to find some similarities with construction &devastation
of the world. Whereas meteorite showers especially take place in the
construction of universe, the crushed geological matter is formed during the
humane’s devastating nature with its commercial interest, changing conditions
in capitalist environment. The conflict between scenes is illustrated
perfectly. This work is like artist’s scream for dematerialization in a
materialized world.Also the sound that took place at the background gives the
feeling of being lost and the fear of obscurity.So the obscurity coming with
the devastation of the world is shown in an audio visual way.
