Alexandra Navratil on Film, Color, and Commodity Fetishism

In an interview with Jennifer Burris for Afterall, artist Alexandra Navratil discusses her works Views (This Formless Thing) (2013), Modern Magic (2013), and Untitled (Animation) (2013). Navratil's practice involves collecting and recontextualizing found images to explore the economic, social, and political implications of image production. She describes how her slide installation Modern Magic originated from images in the magazine Modern Plastics (1934-2004), stored at Delft University of Technology. The work features hands manipulating synthetic materials, presented via unsynchronized slide projectors. Her 16mm film Views (This Formless Thing) examines 'fringing'—an error in early applied color film where color disassociates from objects. Navratil links this to the transition from natural to synthetic dyes, which had economic and geopolitical implications, and to the association of film color with exoticized bodies. Her 3D animation Untitled (Animation) creates a sterile, reflective retail/transitional space, inspired by images of airports and shopping malls. She notes the homogenization of such spaces across sectors (retail, banking, government) and the resulting sense of disembodiment. The animation uses random deviation to simulate human error, but remains impersonal. Navratil's first solo museum exhibition, 'This Formless Thing,' was at Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland until December 8, 2013, and toured to Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam in early 2014.