Flutter
2010 - Installation (Installation)
Zarouhie Abdalian
The first iteration of Flutter was specifically conceived for the Pro Arts Gallery space in Oakland in 2010, viewable from the public space of a sidewalk, and the version acquired by the Kadist Collection is an adaptation of it. The work consists of a mirrored structure with a hidden motor that vibrates every so often. In this play of mirrors, the viewer first encounters their reflection, but in time the vibration distorts the image, making self-recognition impossible and suggesting the fragility of identity. Flutter ’s reflective surfaces also evoke the architecture of office buildings that shake just so in an earthquake. The sidewalk is a built environment and a social space rife with extreme fragility and it exposes economic inequity and systemic racism writ large. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the compounding forces of COVID-19 and the climate crisis have spurred a seismic shift in social life. Storefront windows, as across the country, have become a contentious space further driving apart the public and the private. During protests and social uprisings, boarded up windows of the former shells of buildings are transformed into political and collective murals and communal vision boards, reclaiming the sidewalk. Abdalian reflects in 2023 the conditions surrounding Flutter: Flutter was conceived as a context-responsive installation at a gallery in downtown Oakland, CA, during the summer of 2010 as residents braced for the verdict in the case of Johannes Mehserle, the cop who murdered Oscar Grant. In windows that face a pedestrian walkway, mirrored mylar quivers, ripples, and shakes in response to subaudio sine sweeps transmitted through tactile transducers. The actuated surface of the mirror visibly destabilizes the environment in which the work is situated, reflecting a status quo open to rupture. Installed in 2023 in San Francisco’s Mission District, the unstable image reflected in Flutter belies the relative calm pictured at KADIST’s 20th Street location. Banks are liquidated, layoffs are announced, and ever wider wars for capitalist profit loom. Rupture is the unavoidable expression of an unstable system. Here, viewers encounter their reflection within this process of inevitable change.
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