𝐈 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐫𝐲, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐈 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞

Most of us deal quietly with the need to lift ourselves beyond the everyday. Most of us allow civilization to shield us from the realization that we are part of a world that, when we’re gone, will hum along, barely missing a beat. We focus our energy on what we can control. We build community. We participate. We care. We laugh. We cherish. We comfort. We grieve. We love. We celebrate. We consecrate. We regret. We thrill to achievement, sometimes our own, sometimes of those we respect or idolize.

 

Through it all, we grow accustomed to looking out to the world to find something to excite or soothe, to hold our attention or whisk us to someplace new. Yet the scientific journey we’ve taken suggests strongly that the universe does not exist to provide an arena for life and mind to flourish. Life and mind are simply a couple of things that happen to happen. Until they don’t. – Brian Green, The Nobility of Being, final chapter of  Until the End of Time

 

From the continuous stream of experiences that compose existence, one’s brain has to process and filter what the senses perceive. A lot of what our senses are doing is something like data compression: simplifying, in order to be able to function, says Mazviita Chirimuuta at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. Our brain and sensory system together make a user interface that simplifies the complexity of the world. We’ve adapted well to the natural world, but it is our own artificial creation that renders us defenseless. In the globalized ocean of information that the Internet is, people can seal themselves into filter bubbles or echo chambers, where they encounter information that only confirms their world view. The proliferation of digital media has shattered any notion of a shared baseline reality that everyone can agree on. But it was just a matter of time since research on quantum physics shows that the world becomes real only when we are looking at it. As John Wheeler from Princeton University confirms, nothing is more astonishing about quantum mechanics than its allowing one to consider seriously that the universe would be nothing without observership. 

 

The selected video works seem to emanate from this observing perspective, which through technology has access to multiple timelines and realities. For example Vlad Basalici’s work Broken Intervals, features several VHS timecodes from recorded videos of the events of December 1989 in Romania. From this present point, from where we look, the past events cannot be fixed on an axis that would create a narrative, but they coexist, becoming just a collection of events that refuses to stick together. Vilmos Koter’s Memory of Movements documents a performance that consisted of walking around in a field in gradually increasing circles. The traces of these movements become visible only to the viewers of the completed footage. Last but not least Gloria Luca’s  A place for all,  features scenes appropriated from various clips, be it documentaries or work of fiction, blended in an experimental short film about the public space, which reminds us that art is a process of trial and error that does not guarantee solutions.

 The exhibition is part of the project 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘌𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘳𝘴, carried out by Lateral ArtSpace in 2022. Cultural project co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the project results can be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.