How to Scan Love
Started in the post-pandemic after covid-19, after spending much time slowly with daily-life, house and objects, I entertained that used objects are more than objects, I allowed my flatbed scanner to see object and, which was only allowed to see official documents before.
Exhibition
Pathshala South Asian Media Institute,
Dhaka
Bangladesh
VOLUMES 202226 - 27/11/2022 Zentralwäscherei, Zurich
I scanned pens, hands, faces, toys, keys, vegetables, biscuits, cooked food, clothes, body, hands, Books, mugs, medicines, screws, plastics, gloves, seeds, images and stuff from daily life.
I want to learn how to scan anger, pride, or pleasant emotions and also how to scan love or the clouds or mountains. Or the waves of the sea or the blurred dreams of the came in midnight with fear-doubt-suspicion.
Materials- flatbed scanner, printed single copy book.
Size- 240-inch x 180-inch, a book on base 30-inch x 24-inch x 18-inch.
work process
The scan machine has such a mysterious eye to see in the dark; even a cat cannot see in absolute darkness, and the romantic device needs an object physically touching its body to see clear of it. What is the device looking for, relationship or curiosity about physical existence? I need to learn how to scan love, cloud, air, or water under the river. When I began to
scan human body as a process it appeared as moving image as human body cannot freeze like still life. I am curious about the unimaginable outcome!
Scanner-based photography workshop
In December 2022, I conducted a workshop with photography pathways students at F+F School in Zurich, Switzerland.
Early thinking
A scanned project started in 2021. This is not directly a reflection of a post-pandemic time. I was prompted to think that strawberries looked like the coronavirus during the pandemic. I feel afraid to eat strawberries; strawberries look like coronavirus. I quit the project; I think the project does not look like me. I spent more time with myself and my everyday life objects. Which I have never looked so detailed before. I never thought back that I had to do Caress Comb as the comb cuddles my hair every day. I feel I have to see and touch the apple carefully as this apple, after eating, will never get back the life after it goes to the stomach. I saw real-life daily-life objects as necessary, like art is essential to an artist. With the thinking times flowers and somehow I felt to san some daily life object. It was also an intention I have the experience to document scanned; I never saw how the scanner sees us as a document. The way scanner discovers us, I never realize my daily life like that. I also understand that scanner is a different camera that is friendship to polaroid film stuff. I started to scan randomly. I understood scan machine language slightly; I stopped giving things to scan machines. I feel a scanning machine can watch the cloud, maybe. I do not know how to scan the cloud?
The project incorporated more than 200 images from real life, and the first outcome came with a random image as a raster book and a printed image where it was installed in the Pathshala window to display on the site. The project is an outcome show of Chapakhana Archive, held in exhibition space level 08 on the Pathshala, South Asian media institute, in 2022.