Pharos

A lighthouse is a point of orientation for the seafarer, a series of penetrating flashes telling the mariner that the coast is directly ahead of him and that he must set his course in accordance with this information. If one has been at sea for a long time, the flashes of the lighthouse may seem like a reassuring greeting, the first sign of a landfall.

There is sharp focus on the light room, the place from where the light, which can be seen for miles around, emanates. The sound is an important part of the installation: there is both the tremendous sound of the sea and also the ticking of the mechanism that scans the emitted light, and which becomes a compositional principle in the installation.

Eva Koch’s video installation can be seen as an image of man’s need for points of orientation in life, indeed for light in the darkness. The combination of the luminous pictures, which alternate between detail and whole, and the sound of the eternal sea along with the ticking time, which also ticks/counts down in our bodies, produces a strong and immediate experience of our placing at the point of intersection between now and eternity.

 

Eva Koch©2014/HD16:9/Stereo/6.30min.
Photography and sound recording: Niels Plenge  ·  Picture editor: Anja Farsig  ·  Sound editor: Lea Korsgaard  ·  Colour correction: Henrik Lago  ·  Text: Mai Misfeldt  · Documentation Umeå: Mikael Lundgren · Documentation Dragør: Niels Plenge