Lisi Raskin

by Jeffrey Walkowiak

Technology and science are fields of wonder for children and adults alike. Chemistry sets, video games, and most recently the realm of the internet have become tools that provide people, at any age, with the fuel and elements necessary to further their desire to explore and discover, to conquer and destroy. As an artist Lisi Raskin continues her childhood passion and curiosity towards these fields, but as an adult she masks her naivety with a sense of fear and tentativeness. Her projects include mock test sites, fictional neurotic scientists and make-believe spaceships that are at once playful and carefree but also laden with anxiety and fear. Raskin’s creative process permits these two mindsets to coexist in a dialogue that questions the necessity of technological research and its long-lasting effects on the environment and humanity at large.

Raskin’s interest in the physical spaces of experiments and research is rooted in their potential to be locations of death and disaster. Her most recent work =, 2004, is a landscape portrait that examines and compares three different sites: the desert, an active nuclear power plant and an Olympic diving and swimming pool that was once a large Jewish cemetery. The common denominator in all three landscapes is the presence of a certain fear. This fear is introduced by an alarming message on an answering machine and is followed by an elevator ride that skips the 13th floor and carried through to a serene yet desolate puddle with rippling reflections. The imagery is beautiful yet eerie and the artist’s interjection of juvenile humor acts as leverage to the frightening possibilities of these sites.