Daniel von Sturmer
CATARACT

In CATARACT, 81 screens pre­sent­ed as a sin­gu­lar object, play short videos of small-scale ​‘events’. A com­bi­na­tion of impromp­tu record­ings and staged sce­nar­ios, the work presents a dynam­ic array of moments that doc­u­ment every­day phys­i­cal process­es and occur­rences: spin­ning, falling, break­ing, burn­ing, grow­ing, slow­ing, start­ing, stop­ping… the world is full of hap­pen­ings, but it is only through selec­tive atten­tion that mean­ing is found.

Wittgen­stein stat­ed that the world divides into facts. Our propo­si­tions about the world rest on the facts that we hold to be true, yet in per­cep­tion we can only focus on a small num­ber of con­cur­rent events before we begin select­ing through our own prej­u­dice. We attend to what we deem wor­thy of atten­tion. Read against or beside a mul­ti­tude of oth­er images, sig­nif­i­cance can be mag­ni­fied or nul­li­fied by con­text. Things hap­pen, all at once. Not a cacoph­o­ny but a cat­a­clysm.

CATARACT con­structs an expe­ri­ence where the view­er is pre­sent­ed with a propo­si­tion about the world as a com­plex, syn­the­sised total­i­ty, through its assem­blage of dis­crete, atom­ised moments. The work empha­sis­es the lim­i­ta­tions of our cog­ni­tive per­cep­tion – things are more read­i­ly either/​or, this or that – rather than accept­ed as dis­cur­sive, rhi­zom­ic, and refract­ed. Instead, CATARACT presents a series of unfold­ing con­tra­dic­tions and jux­ta­po­si­tions as a dynam­ic field of rela­tions in time, space and perception.