The zoetrope, a small rotating disc from the 19th century, which creates the illusion of movement through a sequence of individual frames, is the precursor to cinema. A modest invention, situated somewhere between entertainment, science, and philosophy. What the eye tricks us into perceiving is called persistence of vision: the ability of the brain and eye to merge individual frames into a continuous, flowing movement. At around 10–12 frames per second, individual images begin to appear to us as moving pictures. Harley Hollenstein is interested in this threshold between the still image and the illusion of the living.His grandfather is from Oberwinterthur, a machinist at Sulzer, spent his life at the lathe, manufacturing the crankshafts of large ship diesel engines. Not far from there, on a fountain stands a small sculpture of a blacksmith at an anvil. Hollenstein himself rented a studio from 2017 to 2019 on the former Sulzer site in Oberwinterthur, the grounds that once served as the engine of the industrial city and also housed the operators of NEU! as their studio.Once the wheels are set in motion, one can no longer escape their hypnotic turning. The hum of motors, the rhythmic structuring of our working day in orbit around the sun. Systems running at different tempos overlap one another, leaving open the question of when they will next align. It is as though we find ourselves in a dervish-like state of self-hallucination.
(text: Jürgen Baumann)