Mark Aerial Waller: SO-LA: archaeological findings
14th September- 28th October
For the final instalment of CYcLORAMA Mark Aerial Waller returns to Cell Project Space to present a newly commissioned exhibition of work. Meditations on the cosmos have been a persistent concern for human kind since our emergence. Ritual events have been devised to heirarchically mediate between the universe, civilisation and the individual as a means to consider the position of our existence in relation to infinite time and space. This triad of universe / civilisation / individual is the tension for Waller’s newly reconstructed video work, Time Together. Within a new period of research, incorporating work produced at CAC Vilnius for the Baltic Triennial, the artist merges the ancient past of Mesopotamia together with present day scientific observations of solar storms.
As the title implies, the sun takes centre stage. For ‘SO-LA’ Waller departs from his more familiar framework of practice, by using scientific data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a spacecraft that was launched on February 11th 2010 with a primary mission to last 5 years. Waller sets the scene by tenaciously stitching together terabytes of image data taken from outer space, viewing and investigating the sun from its deep core, through its outer atmosphere -the corona -and the domain of the solar wind. This solar data is set in relation to a bronze cast, reconstructed from a 3,000 year old near eastern antiquity Sit Shamshi, depicting a temple site and ritual to the rising sun.
To activate the elusive passing of time throughout the course of the exhibition, real-time digital data of the sun will be updated and presented in unison with a moving architectural construct built for the exhibition. Temporary, permanent dimming or cutting off of the light will occur over the course of events to create a series of eclipses in the exhibition space.
Working in video, sculpture and event based practices Mark Aerial Waller will provide both an interpretation and interruption of history. Whilst science edges closer to proving the existence of history by studying rapid changes in the pattern of energy fields, humankind will create various systems of reckoning time in which the beginning, length, and divisions of a year are all defined. With recourse to technological and narrative mechanisms, Waller stretches, reiterates and at times perverts this mainstream vocabulary of structure and dramatic staging.
