Jere Suontausta Hope, 2024

Hope is a practical light and video installation based on a minuscule incandescent light bulb, a microscope and a camera feed. In the artwork light wheezes, crackles and struggles for its existence. It’s varying, possibly near-death status is being monitored as a magnification via a microscope camera, and the video feed is streamed on screen real time in an X-ray -reminiscent lo-fi aesthetic manner.

The name of the artwork suggests that sometimes finding a glimpse of hope will require a very precise and focused vision. The situation set up in the artwork proceeds to make up for an elaborate question about the vision(s) and their limits in the context of humanity: a microscope is focused into the very core of artificial light, both elements being normally used as instruments to enable us to surpass the limits of our vision – but to what extent?