68 Rivoli
(UK/ 2009) This is a photographic work on teleabsence: snapshots of Internet video calls where no one can be seen. The interlocutor has gone missing – for a moment or forever? – and all there is left is the fortuitous framing of once familiar architecture and objects.
Nevertheless, the images manifest a kind of dubious presence. As we perceive patterns in the series, we might wonder what is being shown so insistently: a place? Some moments? The gaze itself?
68 Rivoli also signalizes the expansion of the photographic apparatus and practice: the whole network is now the camera, with its complex structure taking the place of the focal distance between lens and film. Conversely, a collection of asynchronous software processes has substituted the minimal shutter movement. These are images produced at distance and by the distance.
