"The Conversation" is a post dubbing of several scenes cut together from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
installation views from Video Art For All, Fundação Oriente, Macau, 2012
loop, 1:30 min, Dialog after Artur C. Danto
To create gravity in outer space, the vast spaceship Discovery One rotates on its own axis, just as the voyage through infinite space moves in circles, forever and unnoticed. The protagonists are caught in an argumentative loop, unable to resolve the question. The computer HAL 9000, a supposedly omniscient artificial intelligence, tries to give the astronauts the answer, but a solution seems impossible. Again and again, the discussion ends up where it began. The two male astronauts with the same female voice represent humanity’s insatiable quest for knowledge. The dialogue is inspired by Arthur C. Danto’s essay “The Artworld”. Like Danto, HAL tries to explain the question of art using the beds made by Claes Oldenburg and Robert Rauschenberg. He argues that if someone used these artworks as actual beds, they would lose their claim to being art. Thus anyone who regards the beds as a place to sleep misunderstands their meaning. The endless conversation is juxtaposed with Danto’s argument that a constantly self-expanding art theory must always include new “things” in the art world, which in turn is the condition for art’s existence. According to Danto, any shift in context would produce a new work of art. As a result, the universe of art fills with an endless number of art entities to discover, while possible interpretations drift further and further apart.