Elshan Rahbarazadi & Victor Artiga Rodriguez

A Long While

 

SIMULACRUM
Show Window Exhibition #2:

31st of October - 22nd of November
Monday through Friday, 10 AM - 5 PM

Emser Str. 124 on the corner of Ilsestr.

 

The SIMULACRUM exhibition cycle continues with video art in our show windows looking out onto the street. As the WerkStadt is not yet able to do exhibitions inside the project space that are open to the public due to COVID-19, fittingly the artworks will look out into the surrounding neighborhood.

 

 

A long while is an experimental video work that employs an editing methodology based on the idea of reclaiming leap seconds established by our institutionalized regulation of time. The precision of modern time calculation has led to a discrepancy in measured values. Hence, a leap second needs to be periodically added, functioning as a suspended moment, while we wait for the earth to catch up. As a reflection of this, the composition, decomposition, and re-composition of the video’s narrative is performed by a metronome that follows a 37 degree/second subtractive structure.

 

A decolonial re-narration unfolds as the artists appropriate the two characters from Hans Holbein painting “The Ambassadors”. They impersonate a journey through an atemporal ocean, subjected to the monotony of sea travel and a heavy feeling of boredom. The work ponders on the weight placed by western society on the precision of time keeping to sustain efficiency and productivity.

 

 

 

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*The WerkStadt as an art project space is partially funded in 2020-2021 by the Berlin Senate for Culture & Europe as a recipient of the basis grant program for structural costs to maintain excellence in the independent Berlin Art Scene.