Lisca Bianca

Lisca Bianca is also the name of a small Italian island, one of the Aeolian Islands. Aeolian is a geological term for ‘rock formed by the wind’.

The installation consists of a great many ‘rocks’ filled with constant compressed air, together forming a desolate seashore landscape. The viewer walks and climbs his way through the landscape, and in this way also becomes part of the whole. Boulders and stones in various sizes constitute a microcosm, almost a transported cutout of a landscape.

The installation can perhaps also be perceived as a 3D version of cross-section illustrations from an encyclopaedia, as a motor for memories of a journey to similar rough rocky beaches. Landscapes where a timeless stillness reigns, as if time has frozen solid.

For Karhof, the audience is an essential part of the installation. Together they form one single image. Seen from the door, the landscape first unfolds as a picture postcard of a photo, a mental perception. But the viewer does not want to stop there - after all, the anteroom is also a transit room – and will therefore have to surrender to a physical experience; the certainly not simple trip over and between the ‘soft rocks’. In this way, a dialogue develops between the viewer and the possibilities and limitations of the physical context. The visitor temporarily becomes an extra, and, due to his/her positioning gives direction to the meaning of the installation.

'Once the Aeolian islands were many volcanoes.' 'What's the name of this one?' 'this should be Basiluzzo.' 'Basiluzzo... it sounds like the name of a fish.' 'That one there is Lisca Bianca.' 'How boring. Why all this fuss over a swim.' 'Aren't you going ashore?' 'Are you calling these rocks a shore?' (Uit; 'l'Avventura' van Michelangelo Antonioni)