Emmanuel Van der Auwera

Van der Auwera’s VideoSculptures take a new position to exploring the intersections of digital and physical life and how the filtering of images in production, dissemination, and digestion alter both individual perception and consensual experience. Using the screen as sculptural material, these works break images out of the frame in a low-tech manner. They start with an act of destruction as the artist literally takes a knife to a screen to carve away physical layers. Unbeknown to most, these layers are filters that are adhered to every LCD screen. Without the mediation of these filters, images become impossible to see with the naked eye and white noise fills the space. In a second step, the removed filters are placed on tripods between the screens, which makes the images visible, but only as fragments. In this sense, the act of looking becomes a physical activity where the body and effort of the viewer are essential to seeing. One must change their position to see different angles of the story playing out before them. These sculptures create a field
of view where the image appears in the horizon between the viewer and the screen, subverting the process of perception and breaking the standard suspension of disbelief to give control back to the viewer. In the case of VideoSculpture XXII (White Noise), the content looped on the screen is from the video shared by Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (born Bradley Manning) documenting airstrikes in Baghdad.