Etalon
2012
private collection
4k video installation
David Kořínek
The only one-channel narrative video by Federic Díaz originated in the wake of his previous project Adhesion/ Survival Manual for the Moving Image Biennial in Sao Paulo. Díaz again considers the relation between the natural and man-made environment, and the position of man at point zero in his relation to nature. The key issue being what principles, what parameters underpin the fundamental orientation of man in an environment rid of all otherwise common social and technological prerequisites of our times? For Díaz the closeness of materials from which both the human being and its environment are made becomes the essential connection. Through it humans contemplate their position in nature not as being in an unknown and unfriendly environment but as in quite a familiar hinterland, which they divide step by step, by means of basal geometry, into a functional grid according to their individual needs. And it is this segmentation of space, its measurements and surveying, which is the essential principle of an individual blending into his environment. Thus an emerging system replaces the original technological dominance and brings about the chance of a new existence.