As a Mutely Vibrating Consonant

The schlieren technique names a diagram of analog components that brings to visibility minute optical disturbances—Schlieren meaning impurities in German—such as those caused by temperature differences in the air in a room. Since its definite development during the 19th century, it has been used to see and photograph otherwise invisible currents of air with the aim to trace their paths inside models of buildings, wind tunnels or in contexts such as medical imaging.

The installation—which takes its name from the poem Schliere im Aug by Paul Celan—presents the elements that make up this mechanism in a space open to the wandering of visitors. The parabolic mirrors, spotlights, lenses and projection screens are arranged in space to allow the transit in between the material layers that make up the projected images. While walking between the silk screens and the bamboo tutors that hold the optical components, visitors walk through the layered visual circuit traced by light beams, grids and projection screens.

Inside this space, the movements of the bodies generate the currents that these same components make visible. In this way, the air in the installation brings the bodies literally into contact with the visual circuit of images that generates the visualization of the air currents. In between, gazes, movements and air currents—body and image—dissolve in the material circuits of the image, as a silent, mutely vibrating consonant.