ON THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PERPETUAL MOTION
2015
HD Video auf Reflektor, s/w, Ton, Englisch, 1'57''
mit freundlicher Unterstützung des Technischen Museum in Wien
Stimme der Künstlerin aus dem Off:

Die medienreflexiven Arbeit "On the Impossibility of Perpetual Motion" beleuchtet eine scheinbar als Perpetuum mobile funktionierende Konstruktion des britischen Wissenschaftlers David Jones, welches im Technischen Museum Wien zu sehen ist. Filmisch hält das Video Details und vor allem das Rad fest, das sich angeblich ewig dreht. Die kontinuierliche Bewegung wird auf einen lunettenförmigen Reflektor transponiert, welcher als Hilfsmittel im Film dient. Dazu stellt eine Stimme aus dem Off philosophische Gedankengänge an.

I started filming repeated movements of a motion machine, thinking of celestial bodies. Planets may appear as perpetual but they are exposed to solar winds, gravitation, electromagnetic radiation, and will eventually cease to exist. "Isn't the sun the perfect Perpetuum mobile?" I ask myself. But what if it too eventually burns out? Still, humanity strives for the eternal, for the construction of duration that guarantees the continuity of time. This simple idea of creating a machine that works indefinitely, without any external source of energy, represents the dream of numerous past inventors. But today we know that a perpetual motion machine violates the laws of conservation of energy. Already Leonardo da Vinci denied the existence of machinery which extracts energy from seemingly perpetual sources because they are powered by the energy stored within the source, which will ultimately wind down. The wish to create an eternal energy source that can be equalled to the elimination of the transient elevates the idea on a transcendental dimension. Thus, the abstract idea, per se, continues to live on. The pictures of the ongoing repeated movement have a profoundly hypnotic effect, as does the continuous stream of notes or repetition in music. They remind me of the sound produced by primitive people in order to attain a state of trance. So, does the eternal remain a physical impossibility that might be lived only in religion or in a single moment?