16mm film loop transferred to HD, 5 min, 2001
Courtesy of the artists

If our bodies are constituted and constantly traversed by energy, is there a way this flow can be immobilized and made visible? Are our thinking and sensing traceable in the pictures? This speculation has its roots in the early times of pho­tog­ra­phy when re­searchers like Marie Curie were also investigating the possibility to vi­su­al­ise ra­di­a­tion. ‘Thoughtography’ (thought photography) claimed the ability of lenses to capture and burn images from one's mind onto different surfaces, by psychic means. Berlin [sunrise] shows portraits of Berliners, captured in front of clubs or on a rooftop, at sunrise, while staring into the lens of a 16 mm Bolex film cam­era and thinking about the fu­ture twenty years ago. Their signal has traveled through lenses, photographic film, and byte transfers across the decades. The future they have envisaged twenty years ago—like starlight—reaches us now.