Colour Evolution

2001
Video animation, 42s, mute

Images move by in a flash. A human cell? A tree branch? Or a sliver of bone?

Mai Hofstad Gunnes ́ video Colour Evolution seems to document an organic story but leaves the spectator looking for a coherent narrative. As one image is swallowed by the next, one senses a higher order, only to see it disappear like a train one failed to catch. The images (ninety-nine appear in twenty-five seconds) have been taken from a German biology book from the sixties, an old paperback that Gunnes purchased in Berlin. ”I was fascinated by the drawings which, in a way should represent science and truth,” recalls Gunnes. ”On the contrary, I thought they were more like fiction because as drawings, they were so simplified and colourful.”

After scanning the images, Gunnes ignored the order dictated by the evolutionary chro-nology and instead sorted them according to colour. While colour turns out to be the key behind the sequence, the solution is hardly satisfying. Colours can be easily matched, but how do they work out in time? Should orange come after red? Is green more historic than pale yellow?

The predicament recalls Foucault ́s attempt to come to grips with Borges ́ tale of the Chinese encyclopaedia. Language provides a place where the odd categories of ani-mals (owned by the emperor; embalmed, tamed etc) can meet. As Foucault points out, aphasics, who are deprived of language, cannot form such an order. When confronted with multi-coloured skeins of wool, they keep re-organising them until anxiety sets in. One can appreciate their anxiety. By rapidly mixing colour and time, Gunnes suggests that order is far from self-evident, even for those mastering language. ”For me, the work is about the systemisation of things, the need to make one ́s own system.” The order of the book, whether a German biology text or a Chinese encyclopaedia, is lost in the blink of an eye.

Jen Allen, Exhibition catalogue text, Greyscale/Cmyk, Tramway, Glasgow, 2002