The Key (VR in the age of virtual reproduction)

Authentic Spaces Residency

Zeitz, Germany
2020

The Key (VR in the age of virtual reproduction) is a virtual reality world. Its starting point and conceptual propulsions are a large-format process camera and the photographic image as a building block. In times when virtual reproduction substitutes mechanical reproduction, the camera as a weighty obsolete piece of technology loses its initial function to become a character.

The world consists of architectural 'islands' which are recreated by stitching significant amounts of photographic images, made systematically in such a way to reconstruct the actual place as in a digital environment. They function as ruins – the remains of a destroyed or dilapidated construction. The familiar becomes inscrutable, recasting the architectural locality as unknown. Repetition builds tension and emphasises spatial disorientation.

An unfamiliar, indistinguishable voice, further abstracted with delay, is following you along. The use of glossolalia, the invented quasi-language, echoes and points towards the undefined space. Unlike traditional storytelling, the viewer is left to wander, explore and relate to the surroundings in their way of looking. Where you look, that’s where you move towards is both an analogy of this relation and a navigation principle. Moving through this space is neither a process of becoming, not transforming. It is the experience that shows, rather than tells, a story about the authenticity of space and the relevance of physical borders.