Hinges of the Western Hemisphere – Altán Klamovka, Prague
Ismael de Anda III & Eugene Ahn present a new project Hinges of the Western Hemisphere, which they prepared for the Prague gallery Altán Klamovka in the form of a site-specific installation, which was preceded by research into the specifics of the Prague gallery set in Klamovka Park.
This new installation presents the principles along with their history of collaborating on interactive video installations and interventions, incorporating analog and digital technology, including site-specific aerial video footage, and augmented reality as a means of expanding the role of the viewer/participant.
This project’s title comes from the term “Hinge of the Western Hemisphere”, coined by de Anda to describe the passageway initially located at El Paso del Norte (The Pass of the North), the geological valley that connects the top of the North American continent with Central America through to the tip of South America, at the historical hinge and connective tissue at the Gateway of El Paso Texas, USA/ Ciudad Juarez Mexico, along with the Brito (de Anda’s maternal lineage) family farm located in Presidio, Texas on the edge of Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Mexico. Due to the shifting of Rio Grande/ Rio Bravo and the settling and upended roots of trees on both sides, the property lines of the Brito farm sometimes sat in Texas, or in Mexico, both, or somewhere in the waters in-between where the river periodically eroded the land. This juncture is also known by indigenous history, as the “Convergence of the Three Rivers”, is also an axis connecting the US Southwest, an area where Ahn lives, with Northern Mexico. The interactivity with rivers as points of passage are considered in connection with the Vltava River and Prah as a threshold. According to Brito family history, the farm was started near the same time Altán Klamovka was built, 1820/1821.The concept of the “Hinge” has also been extended to the California Bay Area where Ahn, was raised, as an edge of the US in relationship with Pacific Asian cultures.
Since 2021 Ismael de Anda III & Eugene Ahn have been collaborating on interactive video installations and interventions. De Anda’s & Ahn’s augmented reality projects have been experienced officially and as interventions in San Pedro, Camarillo, and Los Angeles, California, USA; Mexico City; Tirana, Albania; Helsinki; Rome and Venice, Italy; Bath, London, and Stonehenge, England; Taipei and Jiali, Taiwan; Kassel and Berlin, Germany.
Ismael de Anda III (born in El Paso, Texas, lives and works in Los Angeles) received his MFA from CalArts. Using mutant practices including digital photo-collage, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and interactive, site -specific projects, de Anda’s work is inspired by his pluralistic upbringing on the U.S./ Mexico Gateway and living in Los Angeles. Often his work are site -specific, inspired by the communities in which they are created, incorporating locally sourced locations and materials.
Eugene Ahn explores the intersections of material and virtual by creating systems and experiences that challenge modes of perceiving, thinking, and being. His work is interactive, immersive, and personal, with an interdisciplinary approach that attempts to understand and critique cultural norms from a holistic position. Leveraging logic, math, story, and myth, Ahn seeks to re -engineer the encounter with the visual, the textual, architecture, object, Internet, and the very notion of ideas.
