SUBROSA

by Karø GOLDT
2004 / Video / color / sound / 1S / 3' 00

"Abstraction as sublimation: What Karø Goldt’s subrosa demonstrates is how the complexity of an image can be greatly increased by a simple act of reduction or abstraction. As in Goldt’s three previous "plant films", the point of departure is a digital photograph of flowers, in this case a bouquet of roses (such as for a wedding ceremony).
By scanning the individual colour values and then transforming them into vertical and slightly distorted stripes, a process of sublimation which affects a wide range of levels is set in motion. The first is the transformation of the subject itself: The metaphoric package of the rose is replaced by a kind of a post-metaphoric bar code. The composition and density are altered in an equally subtle manner - for the most part in lightning-fast and barely noticeable transitions.
At the same time three slow steps are made in the course of the film, from the colors brown/green/white past the dominance of red/pink/violet (the heart of the video, so to speak) and back to brown/green/ white.
The accompanying track is precisely harmonized with this subliminal display of the colors’ spectrum, which in its dynamism goes through the entire visualization process in the medium of sound. A continuous drone is shot through with microstructural rhythms, which results in an incessant shredding of the sound and image’s dimensionality: The stripes constantly shift along the horizontal axis while the illusion of a relentless vertical movement (sometimes up, sometimes down) is created at the same time. At the conclusion the foreground and background melt into one another in time with the chords of varying intensity, which even more emphatically underlines the principle of subliminality at work in Subrosa." - Christian Höller

1 PRINT IN DISTRIBUTION


distribution format Digital file on server (PAL)
screen 4/3 (single screen)
speed 25 fps
sound sound
rental fee 20,00 €