"Break" in the consciousness of metropolis residents is associated with a forced delay in the flow of endless urban Brownian motion, annoying and unnecessary. With the discovery of digital technologies and the Internet the necessity of movement in the physical world has been expanded through virtual mobility. Are we able to see moments of life around us in this permanent motion? And how to understand what we really "see", but not just fix attention upon traffic signs or internet traffic? What is this way from "look" to "see"?
French media artist Anne-Sarah Le Meur works with time wishing the beholder sees the unpredictable and learns "to see": a splash of colour inside which the beholder stands is changing depending on how attentively he observes it: the slower the beholder turns his head the closer digital object "lets him come", the more alternatives are opened up to him.
In the video art by Guillaume Guerin technogenic "molecules" flow in the "eyepits" of screens creating the single sound and visual techno - space. But taking a closer look one might understand that the force and effect of the installation is coming from a background material - the fragment of our everyday routine, transformed by the "sight" of the artist.
The third French artist Christian Lebrat who made it into history of experimental cinematography and video art, literally stopped at the bridge in Venice in the rain. In the substance pulsating under raindrops he saw the whole symphony itself. The actual sounds of a thunderstorm recorded during the filming build a counterpoint to the "whirlpool" which could be taken for a pure abstraction at some point if not for these sounds. And what does abstraction mean? Is it a step beyond just simple "reading", narrative, conceptual content?
In this case we would like to understand it as a stop, a wish to slow down and contemplate the life around us.
Alexandra Mitlyanskaya peers into the most simple things playing with the kaleidoscope where patterns of fingers put together, of cloth texture, of skin on wrist radiate through…Dazzled by constantly alternating symmetrical rhythm these visual points form the way where every new motion sends either to the previous or to the next one and the most ordinary details carry you away to the journey which doesn't require any coordinate variation but only to stop and concentrate.
In the photography of Natalya Smolyanskaya a few moments seem to have merged, entwined into the one whole creating ephemeral, transparent image texture on the one hand. On the other hand they are modeling "sculptural" form trying to fix moments of time slipping away from us…
Natalya Smolyanskaya