Bob Levene: Inertial Frame

About

Bob Levene's works ask us to re-imagine how we conceive of our physical place in the world - of our imagined senses of time and space, experienced as duration and distance. Her works offer us a space where we might imagine other modes of seeing, and of being in the world. Inertial Frame presents a day in deepest midwinter where the sun sinks over the horizon. The work captures the movement of the sea, sky and islands of the Finnish Archipelago over three quarters of an hour, asking us to immerse ourselves in the landscape. The piece shows us only five shots, each of which change imperceptibly gradually as the light fades. As the day fades the tones of the sea and sky start to merge, and their movement slows to a point where we can scarcely register it. Our sense of imagined depth begins to break down, and the image 'behind' the picture plane becomes flattened out. The capacity of the medium of film to create an illusion of space reaches its very threshold, leaving our minds begin to play spatial games, and wavering between knowing, believing and seeing. Inertial Frame presents a view of world in passing. The speed at which we see the world is determined by our technological and infrastructural limits, be it from a car, horse, train, plane, bike or in this case, a ferry. Levene observes that it is these transport technologies that create our definitions of what fast and slow actually are. Alongside are two recent works, Past Signal.1 and As Far As The Eye Can See. In the former, we see a figure standing on the horizon line in a landscape, barely able to be seen: we register the figure jumping before we hear them land, drawing attention to the speeds of light and sound, and the thresholds of our perception. As Far As The Eye Can See offers what Levene calls five subjective maps" that question the way the three-dimensional world translates onto two-dimensions. The drawings plot the furthest horizons visible to the artist, from five different locations within the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield. The maps look at the way we measure the natural world in order to objectify and make it certain. They question the way in which we go about making sense of things.