Melvin Moti
The film Eigengrau completely foregoes digital technology and emphasises the perfect, hand-crafted skill of the large-scale cinematographic productions of the 1970s. It shows painted moons and the decorative objects already seen in the photographs moving along various orbits and, in slow-paced images of hypnotic beauty, tells of detachment, of suspension in seemingly weightless disconnection from all points of reference. This depiction of weightlessness is a poetic metaphor for Melvin Moti’s view of the famous London museum, which for him is the classic example of a “zero-gravity museum”. Containing a huge collection of art objects from all epochs and origins, this museum, founded in 1852, provides almost no background information on the items presented. In Melvin Moti’s eyes, this turns the museum’s exhibits into free-floating, disconnected objects that cater solely to an aesthetic gaze or a “geological” one interested exclusively in materials and techniques.