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