Radar Level
Himali Singh Soin
(India)
2016 – video installation
Duration 11 minutes and 11 seconds
Radar Level is set in the world’s first and last geological minutes. Two circles take us to two ancient landscapes. One shows images from the northern hemisphere in Mongolia at the site of the first dinosaur fossil excavation. The other leads us beneath the southern constellation of Nambia, on its old waters.
The video changes from desert to water, as one channel moves back in time, the other moves forward, until they meet and change directions. You can notice a series of dualities and codes in this poetic work. For example, the title and duration of Radar Level are palindromes, which can be read the same backward and forward, indicating a play and blurring between past and future. Dissolving in these images are found photographs of humans in spacesuits before the space age. Do they make themselves ready for a distant voyage? Are the suits meant for protection or for colonial imitation? The sound is a combination of dinosaur sounds and outer space vibrations, both anterior to human existence, yet only known through our anthropocentric, technological re-imaginings.
