10.4. – 3.5.2026

In the 1920’s, an avant-garde pioneer of poetry, activism, and scientific organization of labor, Aleksej Gastev aspired to achieve machine-like efficiency in humans through biomechanics. With his ultra-taylorist methods they concluded experiments where a small lightbulb was attached to a hammer (or any other tool) and a long-exposure photograph was taken whilst the worker repeated their task for the time of the exposure. Through the trajectory of the hand, body, and the tool the exposed image would then show the looping movements of the worker’s repetitive act. Gastev believed that with the help of these motion images a perfect worker (and later the society) could be constructed (for Gastev the objective for perfection meaning machinic function). This futuristic (dys/u)topian image becomes a kind of an allegory for consistency—that through repetition one could make something perfect. What is of interest here is not whether this argument is correct or not, but rather the mindset it advocates for, as well as the method that is used to examine such procedures.

This project presents moving image sequences reflecting a contemporary motion study. Here the point of interest is not the manual factory work per se, but rather the everyday gadgets which have reduced the complex acts of labor into a singular act—i.e. a press of a button, or flick of a switch. However, at the core of these portrayed objects’ performance is still the simple, perfected rotational movement—reminiscent of the basics of motion studies and their goals. Each of the gadgets function on the basis of the same movement, yet their function varies drastically. As such the project is twofold; it is a moving image study of material objects and a contemplation of the conceptual and idealistic values these procedures may contain.

Within this installation, the idea of the ‘loop’ is looked at conceptually and critically. Each of the moving image sequences are constructed out of a single rotation of the mechanics of the given apparatus, producing a seamless loop representing the repetitive and singular act itself. As such, the seemingly endless loop is also an illusion: What happens when the loop stops? What about the wear and tear caused by repetitive movement? The work nods toward contemporary visual culture, where video loops fed to the viewer in social media function as (pseudo-)individualist promoters—offering a glamorized and explicit window to someone’s privacy/life—but in the end constituting for collective numbing and ceaseless production of the same. A century ago Gastev wanted to abolish individualism altogether, but today it is valued more than ever. The act of endless scrolling itself becomes the loop, both in content and function.