Report Juliana Borinski - February 2011

Report residency Juliana Borinski: november 2010-january 2011

Surfaces of Plateau, a 1001 pictures

The residency of Juliana had a long running up period. In june 2009 she was one of the participants of Summercamp Electrified, the annual intense tenday encounter between 12 local and international artists, organized by timelab (in collaboration with Vooruit Arts Centre/transdigital).

The work of Juliana departs from a complete fascination for film in its most pure and elementary form. In these digital times, she is drawn to (a combination of new and) old technology, the materiality of the image and unicity. During the Summercamp Juliana had just completed a new piece: LCD. In an adjusted slide projector a horizontal glass slide is positioned with drops of liquid crystal solution. The warmth of the lamp makes the drops evaporate resulting in slow movements on the slide. The slide with the solution is projected on the wall showing an image like a slowly evolving landscape or an experimental film.



In the preperations of the Summercamp we told Juliana about Joseph Plateau, the scientist connected to the Ghent University during the 19^th century. He did research about the after image on the human eye and on the phenomena of surface tension. Because of her big curiosity we organized a visit to the Museum of the History of Science which hosts a big Plateau archive during the Summercamp. It turned out to be a huge source of inspiration for Juliana. A couple of months later she applied for a residency with a concept titled ‘In the Soul of Film’. She wanted to penetrate deeply into the image (photography and film) to study the internal structures of the image and to distil work out of it. Also the soap bubbles as lens and carrier for the image would be investigated, in that way persueing artistic interpretations of Plateau’s scientific work.



Preceding her residency at timelab, Juliana was a guest in at La Kunsthalle Mulhouse where she could also work at the ‘Institut de chimie des surfaces et interfaces’. She developed images based on microscopic images, meaning a fascinating start to penetrate into the soul to the image.£
 


In Ghent she continued her work. She baptized the episode in Ghent: ‘Surfaces of Plateau, a 1001 pictures’. We immediately went back to the Museum of the History of Sciences to take a closer look at the apparatuses and the work of Plateau. Juliana remade the wire structures for the soap bubbles and started to use them to create images. She also made a series of photograms of the wire structures. Kristel Wautier from the archive turned out to have the recipe for Plateau’s mysterious soap solution that could make bubbles lasting up to three hours. We found a collaboration with the chemistry lab of the Ghent University to try to make the original solution.

Continuing on the work ‘LCD’ Juliana wanted to investigate into making ‘unique’ pieces as a final result, as an end stage for ‘LCD’. The slides with the crystallized images formed the basis of a series of unique photo engravings. In those engravings you can really feel the depth of the image, the entering in the medium. One step further would be the direct applying of the image on the copperplate, this way putting forward the unique plate as the artwork and not the series of engravings coming from it. The medium becomes the artwork. We found a wonderful collaboration with the KASK (academy of the arts in Ghent), we were able to use their technical workspaces and rely on their advice. Juliana performed a guest lecture about her work at KASK in frame of the course ‘Exp

Continuing on the work ‘LCD’ Juliana wanted to investigate into making ‘unique’ pieces as a final result, as an end stage for ‘LCD’. The slides with the crystallized images formed the basis of a series of unique photo engravings. In those engravings you can really feel the depth of the image, the entering in the medium. One step further would be the direct applying of the image on the copperplate, this way putting forward the unique plate as the artwork and not the series of engravings coming from it. The medium becomes the artwork. We found a wonderful collaboration with the KASK (academy of the arts in Ghent), we were able to use their technical workspaces and rely on their advice. Juliana performed a guest lecture about her work at KASK in frame of the course ‘Expanding Cinema’.

In collaboration with Kurt van Houtte who runs timelab’s fabLab Juliana started to elaborate ons ome new ideas. For example the creation ‘the dark mirror’ (2011). Starting from some found footage filmmaterial entiteld  ‘the dark mirror’, we produced in the lab plexi slides that could host 24 frames at once. This way one second of film is taken out of its normal continuity to be presented in 1 slide.



A second idea that will be realized in the course of 2011 is the piece ‘Camera burn’, a work about the involuntary disfunction of a video camera. It's inspired by the work ‘Video burn’ by Mary Lucier.

During her residency in Ghent, Juliana was offered to show work during the international Filmfestival of Rotterdam at the end of january, at the invitation of curator Edwin Carels. For the jubilee edition of the festival work artists were invited to present work at 40 special locations throughout the centre of Rotterdam. Juliana was offered to present work at Huis Sonneveld. Timelab supported Juliana’s first solo show. Part of the work she presented was also developed at timelab. The house became the setting for the installation ‘LCD’ and the twelve photo engravings were planted into the living areas of the beautiful house. The original crystallized slides and some small cupper plates were presented at the bureau area in the house. It resulted in an intimate and sparkling dialogue between the work of Juliana and Huis Sonneveld.



The residency of Juliana at timelab is finished now but some ideas that started during the residency will be further elaborated on. We will rapport on them.

A series of three photograms will be taken into the timelab Collection.