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PinholeVideo
“Pictures that are sharply in focus have overcome lack of focus. They ignore the things that can be experienced in lack of focus and definition.”
Oliver Möst's video work, is a continuation of his photographic work. At first glance it is characterised by a conspicuous lack of definition, which is the artist's guiding aesthetic principle both in his photographs and in his video work. The principle of sharpness make us aware of the core of the artist's perceptional awareness. Oliver Möst's own process of perception is the theme of all his work. He suffers from poor sight, so that his glasses have to compensate for 2.0 dioptres in the left eye and 6.0 in the right. His photographic and film work allow us to experience the photographer's subjective eye in the form of “that's-what-he-saw-andperceived-there-in-this-way” and to see moreover his idiosyncratic perception and the way he experiences the space around him (between, hide & seek, brown eyes). Another prominent theme in Möst's video work is reflection on photography and its media-immanent qualities by way of a confrontation of film and photography.
The idea of combining two photographic techniques led him to use a pinhole camera (without a lens), a camera obscura, the basic camera form. He combined this technique with digital video technology by filming and recording with a video camera the image cast on the plate of the pinhole camera. In this confrontation between “old” pinhole camera technology on the one hand and modern digital video technology on the other Möst creates “pinhole videos”, as he calls his work. They reflect the technical development of photography from the simple pinhole camera to the digital and technically highly developed video camera, and thus also the underlying qualities of the medium of photography as they have been constantly expanded over the years.
Text by Kathrin Kohle, from ”Mutations II, moving Stills“ Catalouge 2008, |
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