OSADOK/ THE AFTERTASTE
ОСАДОК
Интерактивная видео инсталляция. 2011
Черный бокс.
Видео с медленно падающим потоком картошки. Некоторым кажется, что картошка с глазами.
Появление глаз на картошке обратно-интерактивно. Глаза появляются тогда, когда внимательный несуетливый зритель покидает бокс. Картошка смотрит вслед уходящему.
OSADOK/ THE AFTERTASTE
Interactive video installation. 2011
“A long time ago, when Antonie van Leeuwenhoek contrived his first microscope and discerned unicellular organisms,it goes without saying that only few people believed him. It is much easier to claim that fantastical and strange phenomena are nothing but optical illusions or expose them as being made by the means of various techniques. However, if our reality is diverse, it must be also scary - it is a container for so many multiple things. Luckily, our
imagination lets us examine the reality scrupulously and discover it as an ally. Various technological tricks create bewitching and harmonious images: all the unusual things in them are transient, subtle and wonderful, as the most innocent magic trick.”
Marina Sokolovskaya
The installation presents an image of slowly falling potatoes. When the viewer reaches the ultimate state of meditation and is ready to turn around to exit, he is confronted with something unexpected: some potatoes start gazing at the leaving person with very natural looking eyes.
The Russian group “Where the Dogs Run” is one of the major art collectives in the country. For over 10 years, it has been consistently extending the language of contemporary art into new technologies. That said, the artists are not so seduced by the far fringe of abundant technological possibilities that they lose the artistic image located at the center. In the case of the present work, commissioned by the Ural branch of the National Center for Contemporary Art, it is the image of illusionary reality, unpredictable and logically inexplicable. Shot with a rapid camera (100 f/s), the potato flow appears quite naturalistic, while slow-motion techniques reference of commercial advertising, with their appetizingly juicy splashes and luxuriant, breathing textures. The potato may be considered here as an archetype of Russian everyday culture, yet in the museum space it is manifests as something alien: arising from the underground, at once alive and not alive, it is uncanny and
alerting. The most affective moment, which gives the viewer a frisson of wonder, arises when the potatoes reveal their human eyes (again an archetype, in this case - of spiritual contact). How to interpret this gaze? Beyond a mere visual pun, it feels like a call for engagement, an elemental acceptance of that ”other,” atomic, imaginary world hidden in the interstices of the ordinary. “Osadok” in Russian is not only “aftertaste”, but also “residue” and “precipitation”. One of the allusions the artists refer to is a mystical movement in Russian philosophy - Russian cosmism. But what is shown is not cosmism itself, but only its “residue”, “aftertaste”.
“OSADOK/ AFTERTASTE” is a winner of a prix of the Symposium PRO&CONTRA 2011 in the
category of interactive screen media.
Where dogs run. 2011
Programming: Denis Perevalov
Audio system, computer, software, Kinect
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