Marcia Vaitsman

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MediaScan: Giant Waves

 

2011 - 2013, archival pigment print (on paper and on silk), 20x60 in / 51x152 cm

These still photographs are condensed videos found on YouTube from the Japanese Tsunami in 2011. To work with these violent moving images I need to freeze them in time, to slow them down, to neutralize them. That is why the moving videos were acquired for 2 minutes with a hand scanner. I am interested in how the collective images found on YouTube created the memory we will have from this catastrophe, they highlight the large impact that home made videos have gained in the construction of reality and their slowly influence over the images we see on the official media. The photographs at first sight show peaceful ghostly abstract landscapes almost monochromatic, revealing in closer look rests of color and digital artifacts. In all of them I still see both images: the peaceful landscapes and the movement of natural violence and destruction.

The MediaScan process was first created during my research at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne (KHM), 2003.

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