When analog film is removed from a camera, it is unavoidable that light-too much light-hits the beginning or end of the roll of film. The entire drama between light and a light-sensitive medium reaches its abstract climax just at this moment. The colors blur, the pigments dissolve and the film becomes 'white', open for the light of a projector. Atomic Parc begins with such a drama, only to change immediately into a grainy black-and-white in which we see both car headlights emerge as well as a series of small dugouts containing flickering light. On a number of occasions, Dominique Gonzalez- Foerster employs abrupt overexposure as a formgiving element. The following sequence shows the same place in the light of day. We see small, covered picnic tables and trash cans in an almost 'white' landscape-a sort of rest area in nowhere. People are playing with a ball; another group plays with a frisbee. We hear the noise they make as though from a great distance; suddenly, it breaks off and is replaced by the machine-like clatter of a film projector. [...]

Rainald Schumacher
Translation: Elizabeth Gahbler


Catalogue excerpt
fast forward 2. The Power of Motion
Media Art Sammlung Goetz
Editors: Ingvild Goetz and Stephan Urbaschek
Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz, 2010

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Atomic Park, 2003/04
Single-channel video projection, color, sound
Edition 3/5 (+ 1 a. p.)
8' 14"