a solo exhibition (7. 11 – 6. 12 2014)
Vaska Emnouilova Gallery, Sofia
Archaeologies presents two interactive installations with a common approach and subjects. The starting point for both installations is existing film material, through which the author studies different aspects of the experience of reality. In Archeology of the Present, phenomena from the recent past are artificially translated into a more remote history, directing our attention to the present. A collection of frames from half-burned reels found in the abandoned cinema in the village of Devetaki are rearranged through the keys of a toy piano. Each spectator can play their own film. Placed in the role of a musician from the silent film era, the spectator alone defines its history and tempo. The materiality of the destroyed reels tells a second story – that of the village of Devetaki, its population and the slow progress of its depopulation. The disintegration takes time before it becomes visible, but when its traces appear, the process has already become irreversible. Reality and film fiction fuse and create a time machine. It takes us to places from the present, which disappear without us noticing.
The title Broken Fall (Again) refers to the work of Dutch conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader. His films show various falls, the risk of being injured that the artist exposes himself to and his complete lack of any attempt to maintain control are shocking. The topic of failure and the vulnerability as an invariable human characteristic have provoked many artists after Ader to reconstruct his performances. In her current work, Albena Baeva, has studied Ader’s “Broken Fall (Organic)”. She adds the audience as a new element to this emblematic work. A small trampoline enables audience members to control the movement in the video. The relation between the falling body in the projection and the spectator’s jump turns these two states – of jumping and falling – into inseparable elements of a joint freefall experience. As we experience these again and again, we are confronted with the connection between cause and effect, between impulse and its natural continuation. The fear of falling is presented as a basic human basic mechanism and the fall as a metaphor for vulnerability, for our fear of loss and failure, which has been genetically embedded in our very first step forwards and upwards.
Credits:
text: Gergana Baeva
music consultant: Venete Neynska
assistance: Sofia Kratchanova and Vladislav Petkov
photos credirt: Sofia Kratchanova
