The Van­ish­ing Oper­a­tor. Alexan­dra Navratil

A con­stant in the work of Alexan­dra Navratil (*1978 in Zürich, lives in Zürich and Ams­ter­dam) is her pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the his­tory of film and pho­tog­ra­phy. She exam­ines its mate­r­ial and tech­no­log­i­cal aspects, its modes of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, its social and eco­nomic con­texts, as well as incor­po­rat­ing a per­sonal approach from today’s per­spec­tive. Her exhi­bi­tion in Lan­gen­thal – home to machine-build­ing and tex­tile com­pa­nies – focuses on the image-based self-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of sci­ence and indus­try. In doing so, her images of the form­less and the fluid, along with the ques­tion of dis­ap­pear­ing cor­po­re­al­ity, inter­link nar­ra­tives of moder­nity and the present. A poster pub­li­ca­tion fea­tur­ing an essay by Mar­garida Mendes will be pub­lished along­side the exhibition.