Alan Bogana
Cave Caustics – Case 11 – Flag of Convenience

Swiss artist Alan Bogana’s computer-generated video projection Flag of Convenience (2014) is one of several “case studies” of his Cave Caustics Project (2013–15), which explores the behaviour of light on various translucent media such as water, plastic, diamonds and textiles. The large-format projection shows an ethereal white cloth gracefully dancing in the light against a dark, indeterminate background. On closer inspection, the palpable tangibility of the light’s transient play soon reveals itself to be a digital materialisation – an inexplicable apparition, since the flag itself is invisible. This is what makes Bogana’s work so remarkable: all we see is the impact of the light, or rather the refraction and reflection of the light rays on the folds of the moving fabric. Physically speaking, we see the caustic patterns of light on the transparent fabric, not normally perceivable to a human eye. 
The artist’s systematic experimentation with sophisticated computer graphics simulation makes the – light’s pure movement – visible, by dissolving the direct and genuine relationship between the image (the flag) and its reproduction (the video projection). Instead, he replaces the flag’s likeness with a third element, the refraction of light on the surface of its fabric. The title, Flag of Convenience, adds an ironic dimension to this theme of substitution. In shipping, the registration of a flag of convenience serves to dissociate a ship from its actual national provenance and to sail under the flag and regulations of a foreign state.
Bogana allows us to very poetically sound out – and grasp – a barely comprehensible basic condition of our perception.
(Text: Bettina Back)