[artinfo] Carsten Holler at Fargfabriken

[e-Flux]

Färgfabriken is proud to present

The true story of:

ONE DAY ONE DAY
By Carsten Höller

Färgfabriken
Stockholm
September 19 and 20 – October 25 and 26, 2003
<http://www.fargfabriken.se>http://www.fargfabriken.se

Carsten Höller’s ONE DAY ONE DAY is this autumn’s main exhibition at 
Färgfabriken, Stockholm and opened on September 19 and 20. This message for 
e-flux is deliberately delayed since the nature of the project made it 
impossible to send out full information before it actually opened for the 
public.

ONE DAY ONE DAY was announced as a regular exhibition, with an invitation 
card, a press release, a website, an opening party etc. But what neither 
the audience nor the media did not know was that there was in fact not just 
one exhibition, but two totally different exhibitions built in the same 
room, hidden from each other and changing every day. Every day a large 
mirrored wall construction is moved to cover the installation not in use, 
so that it is impossible to understand that the exhibition and the entire 
room will be totally different the next day. Therefore everything had to be 
made double. There were two different invitation cards where the invitation 
list was in half randomly. There were two openings, two parties, two 
websites (also changing every day, at midnight), two press releases (one 
sent to half of the media register, the other to the other half – providing 
a situation where one newspaper had information on one exhibition, another 
on the other exhibition).

In a way ONE DAY ONE DAY could be seen as a logic step for Carsten Höller’s 
art. His work is characterized by being, in a literal sense, physically and 
psychically palpable. It engages our perception and our senses so that we 
are affected, not by empathy but because our senses tell us to react to the 
signals emitted by the works. This effect could be described as 
hallucinatory. The longer we linger before the works, the more palpable 
they become and the clearer it becomes that they provide us with the tools 
to discover things we would not normally be able to observe. This means 
that the works simultaneously engage us on several different levels. On the 
one hand, they cause direct sensory reactions; on the other, they allow us 
to improve our personal toolkit for perceiving the world and ourselves. 
Carsten Höller makes us aware of the differences between our individual 
experiences while at the same time inviting us to doubt some of the many 
ideas, commonly taken for granted, about the nature of things. Not for 
nothing did Höller begin a project in 1999 entitled The Laboratory of 
Doubt, a headline that covers his entire artistic oeuvre. In the case of 
ONE DAY ONE DAY each one of the installations consists of these element – 
but here Carsten Höller adds a new and hidden layer by the fact that the 
visitor does not know that there will be a new exhibition the next day. 
Thus the social part of the project – how visitors talk to each other after 
seeing the show – is also part of the project. Have they seen the same 
exhibition or are their experiences just different?

One day of ONE DAY ONE DAY exhibits The Färgfabriken Light Wall, an 
extension of a work originally made for Fondazione Prada. It has been 
installed in such a way as to fill the entire main hall, looming between 
the pillars in the centre of the hall and further enhanced by a reflecting 
surface opposite. is seven metres long and four metres high, and is made up 
of 1,152 25-watt light bulbs flickering at a frequency of between 7 and 8 
Hz (seven to eight times per second). This is the first time that a Light 
Wall is shown with a modulated flow of light. Such a vibration of light 
creates strong retinal after-images. The work is partly an extension of The 
Dream Machine by Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville, which is on show in 
Färgfabriken’s project rooms as part of the parallel exhibition, 
“INFLUENCE: Brion Gysin by CM von Hausswolff”.

The other day of ONE DAY ONE DAY exhibits The Färgfabriken Phi Wall, an 
extension of a work originally made for BALTIC, Newcastle. It is based on a 
phenomenon discovered in 1912 by the Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer: 
if two dots are projected in rapid sequence next to each other, with a 
short moment of darkness in between, most observers will “see” an imaginary 
ball jumping between them in the interval. This effect is remarkable, as it 
raises the question of how the observer can “know” where the second dot 
will be projected, as he or she “sees” the imaginary ball on its way 
towards the future site of projection. The Färgfabriken Phi Wall is an 
extended display of this phenomenon. Three imaginary balls are seen 
“jumping” simultaneously over a surface of 57 dots of light – distributed 
across a wall six meters wide and three and a half meters high. The dots 
are lit for 150 msec one after another, with 150 msec of darkness in 
between. The sequences are generated at random.

A book on ONE DAY ONE DAY will be published winter 2004. Visitor’s are 
asked to leave comments and some of those will be included. A course in 
Creative Writing at the Södertörn University use ONE DAY ONE DAY as a 
starting point for writing. The book as well as the website and the logo is 
designed by Angelo Plessas.

For further information and press images, please visit 
<http://www.fargfabriken.se>http://www.fargfabriken.se or phone +46 8 
6450707 (press officer Pernilla Lesse).

Carsten Höller’s ONE DAY ONE DAY was produced by Färgfabriken in 
cooperation with the Goethe Institut. Färgfabriken wishes to thank the 
Schipper & Krome Gallery in Berlin. Färgfabriken’s main sponsor is 
Lindéngruppen. During 2003, Färgfabriken has a running collaboration with 
Alcro-Beckers and Printfabriken.