something on the horizon

The line of the horizon is something distant and unreachable.

In the open space its distance can make aware one’s own scale and give the feeling of distance to oneself. This is a perfect state and yet it’s impossible since we live in the reality from our own perspective. The more vague are the events around us, the more dividing they are from ”the horizon“.

In my installation „Something on the horizon“ I used reeds to build the horizon. This symbolic plant contains/embodies an interesting antinomy. It has great durability, which results from its texture, whereas visually it is delicate and fragile. According to Schopenhauer the will to live is the strongest desire of human being. I remembered it when I saw for the first time the reeds in winter in the area of the former concentration camp in Płaszów. They were the only plants which survived the unfavorable low temperature. This incredible will to survive became symbolic in the place of the past dramatic events. The experiences of war are not of my own but I see in those events universal values.

The installation was for me an attempt to familiarize the information bombardment. It was like turning negative events, emotions and their overflow into peace, calm and harmony.

The process of making the installation itself was hard, slow and sometimes meditative when I had to hang the reeds (ab. 600 items) and then glue onto their stalks the luminescence points. These points, after switching off the light, created the horizon line seen from the one assigned spot. The horizon line was just like the line of heart beating which is drawn by electrocardiogram – the rhythm of life. When the viewer went away from the point of observation, the line was lost and instead the scattered points of light could be seen over his or her head. From time to time the switched on light regularly showed the forest of hanging reeds, which moved in the wind delicately.