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''The Mediterranean Sea seems to be on fire'', wrote a sailor in his diary in 1772 when he observed a strange phenomenon in the Straits of Gibraltar. This intriguing observation can be found in the book 'Uber das leuchten des Meeres' by the Swiss philosopher Christoph Bernoulli which appeared in 1803. He studied a number of similar reports in a semi scientific investigation and came to the conclusion that certain animal components in seawater produced this light giving effect. Alexander Hahn has taken Bernoulli's book as the basis for a metaphysical essay in the form of an installation. For centuries, the enchanting effect of the apparently phosphorescent seawater has been reported by surprised seafarers and poetically inclined travellers. Strangely, physicists passed over this phenomenon until Bernoulli shed his light upon it, although Bernoulli's book does give the impression that the author has never been to sea. Alexander Hahn, who repeatedly takes certain details from the history of science as the starting point for his comprehensive works (installations and tapes), has placed Bernoulli's study in an impressive fashion into our electronic age. This installation also interfaces with Hahn's previous works in which the relationship between light and matter were studied from different artistic and philosophical perspectives. 'The Bernoulli Itinerary' is principally a sculpture of information. The viewer is confronted by various layers of information in an unlit, black painted space. Four projectors project images onto as many screens from the ceiling. The narrator (Tom Koskames) can be seen and heard on the first screen which seems to float just above the ground, with maritime journals from the eighteenth and nineteenth century which were written in the Straits of Gibraltar where the phosphorescent water was not infrequently seen. At the same time, the narrator tells the experiences of the artist himself at that place so many years later. On either side of the narrator, there are two slanting screens which look as though they form two sides of a roof, on which can be seen electronically generated images of microscopically small organisms. In the middle of these, right behind the narrator, there is a vertically placed fourth screen on which there are computer animations of maritime images (for example, Hahn uses a picture postcard of a sailing ship here as the starting point for a number of mood determining images). Alexander Hahn visualises Bernoulli's ideas in the virtual space of the electronic image. Using fragmented narratives, he looks at the fascinating effects of the light emitting water on the psyche and thus he also faces the viewer with strange questions about the influence of the electronic image on that psyche.
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Erik Quint
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With thanks to: New York State Council on the Arts, Bundesamt für Kultur, Art Matters Inc.
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