Honorary Mention

 

Przemysław Liput | Poland

 

The Past – Print no. 3

The Past – Print no. 4

The Past – Print no. 5

 

 collage, digital print, slide 35 mm | 2017 | 25 x 35 cm

Each print is presented in a form of a slide in the wooden box.

 

The Future

 

stop motion animation, early motion picture device – mutoscope | 2018 | 102 x 21,6 x 40,8 cm

 

The awarded works are part of a series entitled Echo of the Future. My ideological assumptions oscillate around the issue of time, seen not as a linear record, but a loop where it is difficult to distinguish the future from the past. I am interested in the concept of parallel worlds, time loops, alternative realities, especially in the context of pulp sci-fi. The starting point for my research is the final scene from the movie Planet of the Apes (the destroyed New York Statue of Liberty) and Isaac Asimov's book The Advent of the Night published in 1941. This is a story about the cyclic, looped life of the inhabitants of a distant planet, who every two thousand years, after reaching the end of technology due to a cataclysm, return to the Stone Age. The heroes of the novel find the remains of an ancient, scientifically advanced culture. On the basis of archaeological finds, spatter of old reality, they try to recreate the image of fallen civilization. The cycle repeats itself, history is coming round, despite the efforts of the protagonists, the world is in an inevitable regress. Chronology is disturbed, the future becomes a past, the borders are blurred. The central part of the series is an animated film mounted in the Mutoscope – a pre-cinematic machine. A characteristic feature of this device is a very intimate way of displaying a moving image. Photographic images were usually viewed by one viewer through a specially adapted viewfinder similar to an microscope. The principle of viewing an image or projection inside the box by the ‘keyhole’ seemed very interesting to me. In addition to the pre-cinematic machine, I created a series of digital prints (10 pieces). A series of works, reproduced in the form of 35mm slides, is mounted in boxes made of plywood and cut with laser. As in the case of Mutoscope, I was interested in the presentation of works using the peeping motif. The prints are viewed through a magnifying glass attached to the box. The appearance of the boxes is modeled on backlight and transparency browsers. Inside the boxes I mounted the LED lamp. While working on collages, I used graphic materials, fragments of engravings, antique prints, archival photographs and papers.