An unsettling and beautiful piece, WYE tackles white guilt with demanding complexity. While, on one screen, we inhabit the intrinsically arrogant mindset of a 19th-century British settler on his arrival to the Eastern Cape, on another we follow a 21st-century South African man who walks a Port Elizabeth beach seeking a ‘blank canvas’ free of crime and ‘politics’ before emigrating to Australia. on the third screen we enter the white male body itself, which has become ‘colonised’ in the name of a futuristic form of psycho-anthropology.
In WYE, an immersive three-screen film installation, Mikhael Subotzky treads the tumultuous terrain of the “white male psyche”.
When three fictional protagonists travel between England, South Africa and Australia, their projections onto these landscapes mirror colonial mindsets in the historicised past, the vexed present, and an imagined post-corporeal future.
According to Subotzky: “The white South African man carries the mark of the colonial explorer whose ‘superior’ relationship to ‘foreign’ lands sticks stubbornly to their projected and internalised positioning in the contemporary body politic.”
WATCH A DOCUMENTARY FEATURE ON MIKHAEL SUBOTZKY’S PIECE “WYE” – CLICK ABOVE
WYE RELEASE POSTER
SHOWCASING SOUND DESIGN – CLICK ABOVE
As an artist working mainly in film and photography, as well as collage and drawing, Subotzky engages critically with contemporary politics of mis/representation. For this show, he flips the lens inwards to channel the colonial perspective, collapsing it from within rather than criticising it from the objective distance that often characterises historical documentary forms.
“At the heart of my work is a fixation with revealing the gap between what is presented (and idealised) and what is hidden, coupled with a desire to pull apart and reassemble the schizophrenia of contemporary existence,” says Subotzky.
Nest.media, our sister company, has ingeniously crafted a groundbreaking VR replica experience for WYE, setting new standards in virtual reality art encounters. This transformative endeavor seamlessly integrates spatial sound technology and meticulous replication of the beach and deck chairs, resulting in an awe-inspiring immersion that authentically amplifies the physical experience and scale of this remarkable artwork.
The precision in recreating these elements allows users to interact with the virtual environment in a tangible and intuitive manner, heightening the sense of immersion and enabling a deeper connection with the artwork.
INSIDE THE WYE VR APP
INSIDE THE WYE VR APP
By seamlessly merging spatial sound technology and faithful replication of physical elements, we have succeeded in presenting a virtual realm that faithfully captures the physical experience and scale of this extraordinary artwork. This technical achievement opens up new horizons for the integration of VR and art, paving the way for captivating and transformative encounters that blur the boundaries of reality and imagination.
