Hello/Good Bye (Havana)
2004-2007. Installation
Indoors installation and outdoor live feed video projection
Variable dimensions

This piece is part of the series Hello/Good Bye. It was created in collaboration with the German artist Anja Steidinger, in Hamburg, for the exhibition Zöll Duane in 2004. It was later exhibited in the biennial “Bienal de La Habana” in 2006, and in the triennial “Trienal Lumo 2007” in Finland. It is an installation placed in the interior of an exhibition space consisting on a lens moved by a motor in front of a camera to produce a live-feed shown in or transmitted to the public space. Anja and I can be seen in the image of the lens holding one of our hands up. The movement of the lens creates the illusion of us waving hello or goodbye. When the video camera takes the constantly changing image of the lens and projects it to the exterior, it looks like a looped video in black & white and slow-motion. That is what the viewers will think if they see the piece only in the public space. But it they were to enter the museum or exhibition center where the mechanism that generates the image is, they would see that it is not actually a video but a photography trick that uses lenses and a device designed to create this illusion. In this piece, once again, a medium creates another one. It is intended to create two completely opposite experiences between a viewer who approaches art in a more superficial manner, and another one who goes in, investigates and tries to comprehend the piece.