from Works Sited:
Continuing with the library’s ongoing Works Sited series, Daniel Ingroff presents "mosaicism.org", a work inspired by photographs and paraphernalia taken from the Art department’s “picture files” - an unique collection of newspapers, magazine clippings and ephemera collected by librarians prior to the advent of the Internet. Made up of three distinct parts: a website, video and display, “mosaicism.org” investigates both digital and analogue forms of the “picture” by framing some of the aesthetic and emotional assumptions associated with these binaries.
Unraveling the picture files’ current method of organization - alphabetical by subject - Ingroff’s website offers a small selection of images arranged according to taxonomies of a more personal nature. If photographs of “Abbeys,” Actors,” and “Aeronautics” physically push against each other in the folders and drawers of the library’s filing cabinets Ingroff's digital grouping moves freely from one image to the next without any textual directive guiding their organization. Ingroff mirrors this method of free association in his video, which plays on a small screen located in a case at the site of the library. Composed of five photographs taken from folders labeled: “Industries, Rope” “Medical” “Types, Teenagers” “Crowds” and “City Planning,” each image moves slowly into and out of the other in an act of simultaneous erasure and marking. The digitization of these images in both video and website seems an act of liberation, not only from the analogue condition of photographic materiality but also from the designated label of an anomalous subject-centered classification system.
The last display contains a newly made cyanotype containing a montage of images from the picture files as well as two manila envelopes used for checking out the same images. While these two tattered articles seem in stark contrast to the bright blue cyanotype that lies beneath them they both function as anachronistic traces of processes and technologies past or quickly passing. What is the status of an image as it moves through the rapidly changing terrain of photographic access and reproducibility? Whatever the answer to this question, Ingroff’s investigations do not seem to bemoan the death of obsolete technologies nor herald emerging ones. He appears to forgo a complete response for something rather incomplete, not taking account of what is lost or what is gained but asking instead how we respond to these changes.
To accompany the display, the artist has provided a bibliography of titles that have influenced his artistic practice. All titles are available in the library for loan or reference.
Located in the Los Angeles Central Library, Works Sited is a series of projects and displays that consider the context of the public institution and explore themes relating to the library’s collection and practices.
Join us for an opening reception on Thursday, March 4th from 6:00-7:30pm at the library.
