Electronic Theater | Aichi Triennale, Japan

Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2022. ©︎ Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee. Photo: ToLoLo studio

Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2022. ©︎ Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee. Photo: ToLoLo studio

Video still, Parliament, 2022, HD video

 

Video still, Murder, 2022, HD video

Karuti’s installation sets off with the mounted clocks still visible in the library & most of the rooms at the former nursing school. The hands of the clocks become an extended way to think about suspended time, creation & labour, body anatomy as well as  other cinematic and surreal observations activated through Jackie’s month-long visit to Japan in July 2022.

Karuti’s use of moving images, sculptural forms, scans, drawings & electrical objects position the medical library as a site where knowledge is not only accessed and produced but an operating room where imagination is projected beyond normal human language & understanding. She further states that the library is not only a space for the intellectual but the worker as well. This is especially seen through the video (parliament/murder) depicting an owl & a crow; two birds known to symbolize wisdom & skill respectively. Placed side by side, they take on opposite but necessary meanings with the owl as a quiet observer and the crow as a noisy scavenger.

The final result is an expanded multimedia experience that links the library to a (hospital) theatre where multiple observations & transformations take place and are seemingly powered by the machines that tirelessly construct and illuminate the space.