Ondák, Roman: Extended Sleep (1996)

With books suspended in formalin, displayed on a shelf—kept in hermetically sealed tanks—, the installation Extended Sleep by Roman Ondak is presented as a display of unavailable knowledge, or at least in anticipation of being brought back to “life”. This literary knowledge—be it Stevenson, Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Brecht, Pessoa or Borges—is placed in the mute state of a dormant memory, much like that stocked on the hard drives of data centre shelves. Bereft of any technological reference and housing no digital processes or content, the installation nonetheless appears to distantly echo something that is bound to happen at any moment of historical disruption: i.e. a cutting off of access to information, thus suspending the liberty to learn and understand based on the knowledge of what the world is made of—whether in its literary or any other dimension. Nowadays, there’s no doubt that a total disconnection from the network would be damaging to this knowledge access— though this very same connection already harms it by mixing and presenting eclectic contents on an equal level of importance—characteristic of a certain “flattening,” of both ideological and visual/material belonging to the digital realm. While Extended Sleep suggest a form of preservation of some specific knowledge, shouldn’t we ask ourselves about our own capacity to manage our sleepwalking data, which is increasingly escaping us?

Roman Ondak (b. 1966) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava from 1988 to 1994. He also studied at Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania (1993); Collegium Helveticum in Zurich (1999–2000); the CCA in Kitakyushu (2004); he has received grants from the DAAD in Berlin (2007/08) and the Villa Arson in Nice (2010).

Roman Ondak currently lives and works in Brat.