Mirjana Batinić in Robertina Šebjanič / Break of Whiteness

09 April 2010 > 26 April 2010 Curators: Jadranka Ljubičić, Maja Lozić
Sound: Lenjin2, Mario Sammut, Mirjana Batinić in Robertina Šebjanič

Break of Whiteness is a collaborative video installation by two intermedia artists, whose personal interest for the mediums of video and photography has brought them together within the present project. Robertina Šebjanič understands video primarily in the sense of its technical, sculptural, and social characteristics, which often themselves dictate the topic and development of a chosen motive. In her previous installations Niro (2006), Bubble (2008) and Signal 01/02/03 (2008), the subjects of her videos are some kind of phantasms, as if produced by the medium itself and only with a minimal author’s direction, thus existing in the gallery space in the mutual relation to the spectator. Mirjana Batinić is initially interested in emotive capacity of the video. Her video works such as Medusa (2006), In my own time (2007) and Home (2008), represent continuous and disciplined focus on the motive, to accentuate the flexibility of the medium as a trigger for emotive. Experimental aspect of the present project lies on one hand in a combination of both practices, in allowing the medium its technical unpredictability, its animism, while on the other hand in keeping it under a rein of authorship. This way not only the communication between both authors is formed, but as well communication between them and the medium, and furthermore, communication between them, the medium, and the spectator, is created.

The key role in the present installation plays a deliberate disclosure of the structure and the content, i.e. of the process of editing and the evolution of the concept, which simultaneously include and excludes the spectator. At the point when the viewer seemingly grasps the content, the artists exclude him/her with their next move (scene, framing, editing), encouraging him/her to re-feel and re-rationalize what he/she sees once again. The scenes are sequenced on two separate screens like film excerpts, moving photographic images, interviewed by the principle of a scratched repetition and breaking of the same elements on both screens. Visual iconography is complemented by a sound landscape of whisper which enhances the texture of the video. The narrative of the scenes is coincidental, not necessarily intentional; it depends on the perspective of the viewer, on his/her comprehension for some very personal, and others somehow cliché or commonly recognizable emotive images, such as dispersed abstraction of the clouds or rational graphicness of the window frame. The authors manipulate viewer’s perception by switching between emotional atmosphere and production facts, while at the same time allowing enough time to particular scenes to evolve, and enough mental space to the spectator to determine his/her own relation towards the seen. The authors stress out the importance of project’s independency from any philosophical or theoretical interpretations. Contrary, their project is at its basis an emotional video, an irrational field of impressions, similarly as on the unpredictability of the medium constructed equally on the unpredictable empathy of the spectator.

Break of Whiteness is a project of two subjectivities, where both authors simultaneously hold their individual artistic positions and follow their own interests, merging them into an unpredictable result. Emotional interaction with the spectator, spatial definition of the installation, inter-subjectivity, redressed through exchange of impressions of both authors, and playing with the technology of the medium are the central matters of the present project, which culminate in an attractive, aestheticized and subtle, as well as contemplative and associative imagery.

Text: Maja Lozić

Production: Alkatraz Gallery, Ljubljana, 2010 www.kudmreza.org/alkatraz

The program of the Alkatraz Gallery is supported by the Ljubljana Municipality, Cultural Department and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.

Video was created by the technical support of LJUDMILA, Ljubljana Digital Media Lab at KUD France Prešeren and Famul Stuart, School of Applied Arts Ljubljana.

Thanks to: LJUDMILA, Ljubljana Digital Media Lab at KUD France Prešeren, Famul Stuart - School of Applied Arts Ljubljana and Kapelica Gallery.

Photos: Jasmina Klančar