A Little Closer
HD Video, color, stereo sound, 2’04, 2019Like Children
HD Video, color, stereo sound, 2’41, 2019︎︎︎When the time swirls show
The walls are pulsing
Haunting desires of strangers
Bodies start to merge1
The itching, uncomfortable, alien feeling in your body, when it’s carried through a dark tunnel of change, the turbulence the movement creates, the hallucinating vision you attain, the intolerable state that causes pain and misery combined with lucid longing. I wanted to stage the experience of adolescence, the dreams and nightmares that one experiences when transitioning from one place to another – the awkwardness, the uncanniness and darkness this journey comprises. Adolescence is a season of fast-paced
development – moral, social, physical, cognitive, and emotional transformation. Imagine a body, - a distorted body, half of the body, parts of a body, an unpleasant body, a beautiful body, an ugly body… can you tolerate it? It’s both scary and captivating in its strangeness and alienness.
The mindset of a teenager – how does it manifest itself? Is it a grotesque picture of reality? The imagination gone wrong or just wild? Another reality? I wanted to explore the subject of fear and horror during the states of transition and change, - the way how they become alternate states for expression, resistance and even healing. What pathway they have and what footprint they leave. The poetics, humour and unpleasantness they entail. A teenager’s mind can be a portrait of a decade or a time, pointing on to the power of transformative strength that goes alongside the chaotic dynamics characteristic of to the times we live in. It can be as well also a space and a place for (imagined) language. Futura Gallery’s space, the
basement, offers a body for scenography and dramaturgy to this subject. The presence of a body as real (physical) and symbolic (psychological) is situated there in conversation with the language of architecture, revealing itself in various gestures and appearances.
1Thomas Moore, When People Die , published by Kiddiepunk, 2018
Maija Rudovska