KAIROS - Travels in Turkey - Thoughts on Time
A Video Art Program by Carol Goss
This jpeg image is a photo taken in Konya, Turkey of a Selcuk tile.
The program KAIROS cannot be understood on a literal level. It presupposes
that images are a language of the right brain, decipherable by the unconscious.
Verbal language content is used to preoccupy the linear, conscious channels
of the viewer's brain. The viewer is then able to free-associate with the
visual content. This pre-cognitive knowing bypasses third party narrative
interference and permits the viewer to communicate directly with the original
image makers. Time is collapsed into first hand experience.
"Kairos" is the Greek word for "epochal time" or a "changing of the gods",
for which there is no equivalent in English, because the cultural memory
of that language group is too brief. Turkey (Anatolia) has had continuous
city-state culture for over 10,000 years. Its human occupants have come
from Asia, Europe, and the Persian/Arabian penninsula. It is on the edge
of: West/East; urban/nomad; Christian/Muslem/Jewish; eunuch/hermaphrodite;
matriarchal/partriarchal; figurative/geometric; modern/prehistoric.
In 1990 Carol Goss was invited to give a lecture and exhibit on "Electronic
Painting" at the Selcuk Universitesi in Konya, Turkey. Her residency there
for a month allowed her to record video, 35mm slides, b/w print film and
keep a journal. She travelled from as far east at Urgup, and back through
Ankara, Ephesus, Izmir, and Pergamon to Istanbul, one month before the
outbreak of the Gulf War. These recordings are the primary source material
for KAIROS.
KAIROS technically employs verbal threads which are intentionally
unrelated to the visual track . These threads serve as an anchor providing
linear security to the viewer, while they are left visually suggestible.
In order to sustain the desired image density, all source materials must
be digitized. Multiple layering, including short, subliminal edits require
the use of a non-linear editing system.
This page and all its contents are copyrighted by Carol
Goss1996 All Rights Reserved
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