Relop, 1970

“Relop” is a project for an optical device designed by Zbigniew Dlubak, Andrzej Lachowicz and Natalia Lach-Lachowicz during the Symposium Wroclaw ’70. The instrument was to consist of an array of mirrors, a group of periscopes and an ‘optical bench’. All elements were meant to be placed in the urban space of Wroclaw. In an unpublished interview with Karolina Lewandowska, Zbigniew Dlubak described the working principle of the periscopes in the following way: ”one of these served to observe the clouds, another branches, while still another showed traffic on a street, etc. All of this created a whole before a viewer”. While an explanatory note from the authors read: “by the dislocation of images and the simultaneous presentation of distant objects and events, we want to stimulate the viewer’s imagination by making them aware of the fact that the process of perception takes place precisely in such way, therefore the order of the inside world is different than the order of the outside world. The working of this instrument proves that art is incidentally created beyond the sign-object, consequently, it is an intentional object.” The project remained unrealized.