Resonance of the Unforeseen- Taylor Wiley Final

 Taylor Wiley

ARTH1132

10/22/2023

Resonance of the Unforeseen

“Resonance of the Unforeseen” by Ivana Franke, is an art installation at the Yokohama Museum of Art in Yokohama, Japan. This piece covers the front of the museum completely, with its massive mesh panels, hiding it from the public's view. The material is light, and the slightest breeze makes it sway and ripple. The way the mesh sits and layers, with black and white stripes, makes it look as if an old TV screen is there, with the static of the white noise playing on it. Made during a time of isolation, this piece exemplifies the lonely feeling of quarantine.

Ivana Franke is a Croatian visual artist based in Berlin, born in 1973. “Her investigations with light approach the interface between consciousness and environment, focusing on perceptual thresholds”. She tries to invoke emotion in her work, using light as her medium. She has many solo works including, “Twilight. Neither perception nor non-perception, Kunsthalle Bern (2022), Your country of two dimensions is not spatious enough for me. Limits of Perception Lab. Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (2020), Retreat into Darkness. Towards a Phenomenology of the Unknown in Schering Stiftung Project Space in Berlin (2017) and Perceptual Drift (Galaxies in Mind) in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb (2017)”. She also has many commissioned works, including “Yokohama Triennale 2020, 11th Shanghai Biennale, 2016, Manifesta 7, 2008, and the 9th Architecture Biennale in Venice, 2004.” The one I wish to focus on is the piece commissioned for the Yokohama Triennale, “Resonance of the Unforeseen”.

Ivana Franke in her studio in Berlin, 2012, Luba House

The Yokohama Triennale is an international art exhibition held every 3 years in Yokohama, Japan, first started in 2001 by the Japan Foundation. In 2011, Yokohama City became the primary organizer.   There were 12 “Episodes” or Parts of the 2020 exhibition, which was announced in 2018. The exhibition used the concept of “Episōdo”, or Episodes in English. Ivana had multiple works in the exhibition, her first work, Chairs Outside of Human Consciousness, was in the initial Episode, Episode 00.  Her other work, Resonance of the Unforeseen, was in the 12th Episode 10. For this Episode, “13 artists presented short videos created especially for the Triennale on the official website. In addition, 15 video works in the exhibition were screened on the website for a limited period.”  “Resonance of the Unforseen” has its own version of these videos, which is still available to view on YouTube. 

In this video, we see B-roll footage of the mesh surrounding the art museum. Slowly moving from one side to the other, showing different angles and perspectives of the building, and how the mesh surrounds it. As the 24-minute video continues, you also hear a female voice and another, quieter one, which are Ivana Franke herself and Alexandre Mballa-Ekobena, A Technical manager based in Germany who worked on the project as well. Their voices are in the background, and you can barely hear anything they are saying. The last minutes of the video are 1 minute of credits and 4 minutes of a black screen, which comes abruptly. The video helps exemplify the main theme of the piece, which is loneliness and Isolation through its eerie feeling, and gloomy atmosphere.

2020, Resonance of The Unforeseen, Kato Ken

The title for the 2020 Yokohama Triennale is “Afterglow”, which, according to Raqs Media Collective, was chosen “to reference how, in our everyday lives, we unknowingly experience the residues of light sparked at the beginning of our time, as in the case of how the “white noise” on our analog televisions included fragments of cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the cosmic Big Bang. By referring to the Big Bang’s destructive energy that propelled creativity and, over time, gave birth to life on this planet, and its radiation that is toxic as well as therapeutic, Raqs Media Collective takes interest in the cycle of destruction and recovery in the human activities of the contemporary age.”. This, along with the timing of the pandemic, led to the perfect storm for Ivana to do this piece. 

The pandemic left all of us feeling lonely and isolated, as if there was no one there as if we disappeared from the world's perception.  Then, in October of that same year, “Resonance of the Unforeseen” put the feeling we all felt into a visual experience. People going about their day saw a building they had become familiar with disappear into a dark abyss, with strange, shifting patterns. The museum was locked away from the world.

Though the Yokohama Triennale was the debut for the piece, it has made appearances elsewhere as well. According to the Turizmoteka, a news website based in Croatia, from October 13th to November 12th, a site-specific version of the piece will make an appearance at the music pavilion in Zrinjevac as part of the “Artupunktura”, an art project held by the Tourist Board of the City of Zagreb. Here, many other people will be able to experience the emotional rollercoaster that is “Resonance of the Unforeseen.”

Another accomplishment for this piece was its addition to the “The Best Public Art of 2020” list by Artsy.net. According to the entry for “Resonance of the Unforeseen.”, Raqs Media Collective, the curators for the event say, “Ivana Franke’s work is ambitiously public in terms of scale and presence. But the intimate game it plays with light and line renders near invisibility, paradoxically making it unforgettable.”

Unfortunately, there is not much information on the planning or production of “Resonance of the Unforeseen”. Of the very little information, we can see that the people who were a part of the piece's realization and development were “Alexandre Mballa-Ekobena, Israel Lopez. Yokohama Museum of Art: Junko Uchiyama, Aki Hoashi”. We can also see the actual dimensions of the piece. It is 117.5 meters by 13.4 meters and is constructed using a light-weight mesh and steel construction. Other than this and visual looks from photos, and the little information above, there are no English-based sources about the construction of the piece. I have tried contacting the artist herself through her publicly available email on her website, but as of Oct 22, 2023, I have not gotten a response. 

Although not much about “Resonance of the Unforeseen” is publicly known, you can see inspiration from her other works. Franke mainly plays with light, and how viewing it in different spaces can change your perception of the piece itself. Many of my favorite works of hers include “Lovers Seeing Darkness”, “From the Faraway Past and From the Future”, and “In Circles”. They all use the space around them, and light to show the feeling that Franke wishes her audience to feel. 

Ivana Franke. Lability. Art Pavilion, Zagreb, 2009. Photos: Kristina Lenard

In conclusion, “Resonance of the Unforeseen” was a monumental piece that even still today has influence on the world around it. It is forever cemented as one of the best public art pieces from 2020, as it was such a huge hit in 2020. It was such a hit, that now, in 2023 3 years later, it is still getting different versions of it commissioned. You can still see Ivana Franke’s style of artistic vision throughout the piece, with how she uses the mesh to manipulate the light. The piece is very well throughout, with an important meaning behind it. 

Bibliography 

Editorial, Artsy. “The Best Public Art of 2020.” Artsy, December 2, 2020. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-best-public-art-2020. 

Franke, Ivana. “Ivana Franke ’ About.” Ivana Franke. Accessed October 20, 2023. https://www.ivanafranke.net/about. 

Franke, Ivana. “Ivana Franke ’ Resonance of the Unforeseen.” Ivana Franke. Accessed October 22, 2023. https://www.ivanafranke.net/work/resonance-of-the-unforeseen. 

“The International Exhibition of Contemporary Art Held in Yokohama Once Every Three Years.” Yokohama Triennale. Accessed October 20, 2023. https://www.yokohamatriennale.jp/english/. 

Something Curated. “Inside Japan’s Yokohama Triennale 2020.” Something Curated, August 24, 2020. https://somethingcurated.com/2020/08/24/inside-japans-yokohama-triennale-2020/. 

Yokohama Triennale. Yokohama Triennale 2020 Afterglow Report. Yokohama: Yokohama Triennale, 2020. https://www.yokohamatriennale.jp/english/assets/pdf/archive/yt2020_docs_eng_web.pdf. 

“Zagreb: Treće Izdanje Umjetničke Platforme Artupunktura.” Turizmoteka, September 20, 2023. https://www.turizmoteka.hr/destinacije/zagreb-trece-izdanje-umjetnicke-platforeme-artupunktura/.