Exotic-A by Kari Altmann is a video of continuously fracturing digital imagery depicting a natural “exotica” of tropical flora and fauna.
Video documents move in, out, and through one another in a continuous flux. They are bound by both a static, “bedrock” background image, as well as a static, diaphanous foreground “gauze.”
The views shift in and out of focus and it all remains dreamy and illusionistic.
The work, thus, mirrors the indeterminacy of the natural world.
It is not a coherent form with an essential focal point; it is an ecology – in motion.
Altmann’s broader project works with these same ecological principals.
When one views Altmann’s website, most of her projects are listed, but not linked to as they are either works in progress, or research for future projects, or simply not available to be viewed.
But, go back to her site a month later and something’s changed.
Some of the work from the more distant historical past is made available, and some of the work from the more recent historical past is made unavailable.
Altmann understands her personal archive of work to be mutable, taking advantage of the instantaneousness and general ease of change in the digital, to place her own history in flux.
Projects are listed; projects are taken away.
All one can do is describe the view as it slips out of one’s grasp again and again.