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Josef Strau
Theatre of the Lamps Talking in the Light of the Past
2010
modified floor lamps, speakers, computer, A2 poster
Josef Strau is an artist and a writer. Over recent years he has conflated the two disciplines
into what could be thought of as art and bespoke publishing. Strau’s work often includes
sculptures using modified domestic lamps in a highly subjective manner. The lamps’
elegant and awkward personas are provoked with selective combinations including paint,
coloured pens, fabric and sometimes directly applied text as another way to present and
distribute his writing. However the unconventional tight dense layouts make for no
ordinary reading experience. Ant-like fonts draw the reader’s face close to fully immerse
into the stream of consciousness prose. Bundling up an oversized poster giveaway ensures
the writing can be fully appreciated in a conventional manner, while the visual installation
can be recalled as another kind of experience.
In the
Theatre of the Lamps Talking in the Light of the Past
, Strau has given further voice
to the lamps to broadcast his writing. Each of the seven lamps has a small speaker wired
inside the shade and is connected to a computer that prompts each lamp to tell a story
in turn. The English text stories were fed through voice generating software to produce a
scratchy, difficult to hear if not annoying ‘robot’ voice in seven different tones. The audio
level and sound quality makes it necessary to be drawn intimately close to decipher the
words. All seven stories were studiously translated into Chinese and recorded by
librarians at the Shanghai Library to create the Mandarin speaking lamps accompanied by
the Chinese character A2 poster.
The installation enjoyed three locations over the sixteen months it was installed at the
State Library of Queensland in Brisbane. The final installation was within an internal
garden enclosure, fenced with rich stained timber with a view into the library café. In
this setting, the lamps appeared to have their personalities fully developed, confidently
interacting with those who cared to listen or happened to eavesdrop.
