Vibeke Mascini

A pistol fired on the summit was no louder than a cracker set off in a room.
2017

C-print on matte Fuji Christal Archive paper, maple frame with museum glass
Certificate includes the artist's report of the expedition
100 x 134 cm (framed: 103,4 x 137,4 x 4,5 cm)
Edition of 5 plus 2 AP
Eu 3.175 (excluding VAT and shipping)

Vibeke Mascini
Born in 1989, The Hague, the Netherlands
Lives and works in The Hague, the Netherlands

Vibeke Mascini’s work studies situations in which systems falter and the rules fail. She probes formal definitions recorded in declarations and objects on the basis of science, landscape and language. She infiltrates contemporary systems using interventions, installations and texts, thereby contributing alternative ideas.

In 1787, geologist and natural scientist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure took the top of the Mont Blanc with him after the first scientific expedition there. The pyramid-shaped piece of granite is now at the Teylersmuseum in Haarlem (NL), 3.2 meters above sea level. One of the things De Saussure wanted to precisely determine was Mont Blanc’s exact height; he also wanted to catalogue the blue skies on the mountain.

Fascinated by Mont Blanc’s siren song, Mascini’s project Cloud Inverse followed in the earliest footsteps to the summit. During the climb she studied historic sources. Stories handed down from generation to generation mixed with personal reports and images. Cloud Inverse is an experimental travelogue that examines footprints and footnotes whilst simultaneously questioning a human history of counter-gravity.

Whilst searching for the summit of Mont Blanc, Mascini encountered many stories describing the mountain's extensive shadow, which defines the sunrise and sunset far into the surrounding area. Mont Blanc may be the tallest mountain in the Alps, but its horizontally projected shadow is much taller. She traced this shadow mountain as it moved around the neighbouring towns and meadows as part of a documented performance. On 4 January 2017, she managed to get to where the shadow mountain ends, reaching its summit at 10:05 in Servoz, France.

A pistol fired on the summit was no louder than a cracker set off in a room. documents the shadow summit of Mont Blanc. This analog photograph was developed in a dark room, where Mascini mediated the light as it hit the light-sensitive paper. Every print therefore has a unique shadow. The title is a - literally translated - line from Horace-Bénédict de Saussure's logbook.