++++ Physical experiments were hard to bear at school. A group of bored pupils stood around a teacher who desperately tried to awaken some fascination for natural science, but at most provoked malicious joy when the experiment failed.
Did the Finnish artist, Mika Taanila, want to work through these experiences in his contribution to Manifesta, A Physical Ring? In any case, he goes in search of beauty in physics. His film at Frankensteiner Hof shows a pendulum which rotates about its own axis with minimal rhythmic displacements. It is encompassed by a large, slightly vibrating metal ring. The film runs in parallel on three screens, accompanied by a pulsating tone similar to a heartbeat which slowly quickens towards the end. Yes, that was basically it. Nothing else happens.
For A Physical Ring, Taanila takes up a found, unmoved documentation of a physical experiment done during the forties in Finland and sets the material into motion by means of careful editing. He does not know the original purpose of the test, and by translating something static into a regular circular movement, he also makes it absurd. He is interested purely in the aesthetic component which he extends according to his ideas and subjects to the accompanying rhythm.
In view of the meditative circular pendulum and the heartbeat sound frequency, the viewer can end up in other spheres, beyond reason and practical purpose, in spheres of apparent senselessness, of absurdity, of things motivated solely by aesthetics. Taanila demonstrates that physical experiments can be beautiful, and to experience this, you do not always have to understand their design.
But what is senseless is obviously not an area in which, in our time, you should spend much time, and thus the artist gives a warning, "The flicker effects in the film might cause headache or migraine."
Frankensteiner Hof, Große Rittergasse 103, until 25 August. jdv