Pedagogy of Seeing
2024
Video installation: two synchronised video loops, 01’03”, 4K
As old as two millennia, the notion of Melancholia envelopes various conditions, from sorrow and grief to contemplative sadness, and longing. But such slow and lengthy human conditions do not fit into the landscape of contemporary society, which seems to be marked by fitness, roaring productivity, efficiency, and unlimited achievement. The everyday overflow of information and imagery splits our attention into the tiniest instants, and the hyperactive movement of the eye accelerates ever so greatly. Thus, I find myself in a confusing dialectics of sentiments, between anxiety and burnout, longing and romantic wishfulness. The irrepressible desire to express sublime emotions glides through the boundless space of contemplation, until it smashes into the wall of visual banality. On the site of this little catastrophe, I find a looped self-reference. Returning One from the existential rest back into an ironic slapstick. And vice versa, bringing back the melancholic mood.
Installation view from the exhibition “Spirtys” at “Atletika” gallery, 2024, Vilnius
Photos by Simonas Pigulevičius and Giedrius Stonkus