Günther Selichar
«Sources»

The insignia of media-technical apparatuses proliferate on the large-format Sources; in these macroscopic shots of image carriers, or rather information carriers, it seems at first glance that the sign-like message has been separated from that of the media, the carrier. It is as though we were seeing the purity of the physical material – the canvas – before us, overlaid with the enlarged epidermis of the physical-chemical or electronic carrier material. The enlargements of infographic carriers, of monitors, photocopies, printing, etc. make us aware of the ”place” that bears (away) the traces of our presence. Thus the carriers, to which we entrust the legacy of our presence, already bear a ”mark”, seem to be ”punctured”, injured, and do not correspond at all to the immaculacy of a surface, to which we sacrifice the dimensions of space. In Günther Selichar's Sources, the ”source” has dried up, and yet the Sources enable us to suspect that there is something hidden behind the surfaces, something that surrounds us daily and that we need to save, reproduce and communicate. The Sources show that each and every media-technical apparatus bears that which is depicted into a ”sphere of principal otherness”, as Erwin Panofsky phrased it in the 1920's. Each reproduction bears the mark of this ”otherness” and thus generates a truly productive difference.


From: Hubertus von Amelunxen, On the Way Back to the Image, in: Hubertus von Amelunxen, Robert C. Morgan, Urs Stahel: Günther Selichar. Screens, cold. (Vienna: Triton, 2001).