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  KINETIC
Electricity, motors, tumeric, found objects
dimensions variable
2008

Technical assistance by Kit Kube

Tether: Sext is a kinetic piece that leaves behind trails of spice as it ‘wanders’ across the gallery. It must be ‘fed’ in order to leave tracks of where it’s been to get where it’s going. A copper bowl of tumeric is attached directly to the ‘wandering’ sculpture. The viewer can spoon the tumeric into a little sieve and watch as the spice sifts onto the floor. As the sieve empties, the viewer sees that tiny objects emerge from the diminishing spice pile. These objects are miniature bones. When the sieve is completely emptied of spice, the viewer can hear the sound of bones rattling against the metal.

Noon, or hora sexta, was the usual hour of rest for early Romans. The sun is fullest at this time and represented the brilliance of the divine for Roman Christians (and Jews before them). As such, it was an auspicious hour. In many mystical traditions the sixth (sext) hour symbolized a kind of culminating point of the day and it became a customary occasion for prayer.

This sculpture wanders randomly but is tethered to the ceiling. It has incomplete freedom. It is never fully ‘empty’ and never completely ‘full’. It takes from the viewer and gives right back. The viewer does the same. A connection is made and recorded in real time. Golden paths and piles are visual remnants of this relationship, and they become imprinted with the footsteps of viewers and movement of the wheels. A fleeting relationship is established between that which is figuratively alive (the moving object) and that which is literally alive (viewer). ‘Life’ acts upon life. Repeat. And again.

 

 


   
"Tether;Sext"
 
               
   
           
   
 
               
       
               
       
               
       
 
 
 
       
© Malena Bergmann 2009