2019
24 school desks, 48 table lamps, 24 LED tubes. 
Site specific installation

Polarization is a site-specific installation which was installed inside a grammar school in Bratislava. A school represents critical space for questions regarding education system in relation to understanding and processing available information – critical thinking. The neon tubes between two desk lamps represent two equal but opposite opinions without any evident hierarchy (investigator – investigatee) and indicate the impasse of the post-truth situation. 

The arrangement of the desks into two groups standing in front of each other reveals the absence of an authority – a teacher – and multiplies the cyclicity which lacks the guarantee of at least elementary facts.

The installation uses light as a symbol of enlightenment and truth which can be doubted. The single truths become unimportant under burden of multiplying and overwhelming untruths. In the artwork I contemplate not only the education towards critical thinking which should help solve the problem of orientation in post-truth era, but also the position of the education institution itself and its processes which are, compared to the dynamic nature of the given problem, not very flexible.

The author of the technical solution and programming: Rastislav Rehák

Photo: Matej Hakar