Western Round Table is an interpretation of a meeting held in 1949 in the Mojave Desert, where a group of men from the fields of art, literature, criticism, music, science, philosophy, architecture, including Marcel Duchamp, Frank Lloyd Wright and Gregory Bateson discussed contemporary artistic practice, its modernist legacy and future. The exact location of their meeting is unknown. Western Round Table is an enigmatic document of this meeting and imagines its source material. The two projectors are facing each other and speak/start processing at the same time, projecting loops of clear 16mm film that sit on top of them like hats and carry optical soundtracks of feint chimes (one base, one melody). The light of each projector's bulb throws the silhouette of its opposite large onto the gallery walls, their shadows looming characters.
Western Round Table, 2007
Two 16mm film loops, two projectors, optical sound, 2 min. each
Images: Installation view at Lux at Zoo, London, United Kingdom © Rosa Barba
Western Round Table, 2007 has been on display at the following locations:
Museum Frieder Burda, Baden Baden, 2023
Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome+GAM, 2022
Malmö Konsthall, 2017
EYE Museum, Amsterdam, 2016
Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle, 2015
BIM Buenos Aires, 2014
St Louis, 2012
Tate Modern, 2010
Petah-Tikva Israel, 2010
Gio Marconi, 2009
Lux at Zoo London, 2009
Kunsthalle Basel, 2008
Stedelijk Museum, 2008