A MOUNTAIN PHENOMENON
Sissa Micheli
Death 24 Times a Second
2016
Video still c-prints
24 x 30 cm
unique specimens

Sissa Micheli makes the merging of documentation and fiction the basis of her artistic interventions, which are expressed primarily in photography, video, and object art. The rescue blanket made of aluminum and polyester, developed in space travel and now used for the rescue of victims, serves as the staging material for this. With its silver interior, Micheli simulates natural elements - such as mountain massifs in the three-part video installation "A Mountain Phenomenon". These (silver) mountains were rotated and filmed against their nature; they are projected onto three floating, staggered round reflectors. The result is a spatial experience that catapults the viewer into space and its planetary world, into "infinite" realms that evoke a feeling of eternity. Micheli leads into a fantastic world - where space probes like "New Horizons" actually open up new horizons - but not without questioning physical laws by "impossible" constellations. In the course of the permanent rotation of the Silver Mountain, the course of time is made visible through the change of light and experienced as a subjective, existential feeling, as a "dimension of the natural universe" (Augustine).
— Petra Noll


The artist repeatedly works at the interface between moving image and still image. The video still in the auction is one of 6 unique pieces that capture a rotation of the mountain at 5 second intervals. The times are taken from the video timeline. The title Death 24 Times a Second refers to the still image. According to Roland Barthes, death and transience are always inscribed in the stillness of time.