Žilvinas Kempinas is an artist I've only recently known about. When talking to a friend about my obsession with fans (ventilators) he told me about this installation he saw in Paris. He had no idea who the artist was but with some extensive research I managed to track him down. I found the work seen in Paris (Flying Tape) and learned more about the artist and his other projects. A lot of his work has sound as a by product and he's obsessed with magnetic tape.
'Flying Tape' features an enormous circular loop of tape filling the entire space, floating and spinning in mid air. The tape is held aloft by a vortex of air created by seven industrial fans pointed outward toward the gallery walls. As the tape spins, it slowly ascends and descends, allowing the viewer to step inside its circle.
The installation achieves its serene monumentality through the careful calibration of the given architectural characteristics of the space and the introduced elements of the fans. ‘Flying Tape’ emphasizes videotape’s contradictory materiality, its surprising strength and flexibility, yet barely-there lightness: the installation is both subject to, yet magically defiant of gravity.
With the growing ubiquity of digital recording technologies, the simple magic of the first VCR’s is becoming ever more remote, and the actual material of analogue videotape, slowly obsolete. Kempinas’ installation manages to re-engage with the metaphorical power of tape as a recording medium. The literal and perceptual feats that ‘Flying Tape’ achieves, serves to powerfully extend tape’s virtuality and transformative potential into an entirely new physical domain.
