Lingering Cut 01

About

‘During the initial stages of the COVID 19 lockdown in May 2020, an older idea resurfaced as the challenges of thinking, planning or even producing collaborative non-studio artworks or projects of any kind became almost unsurpassable. An idea of a collective action turned into a situation of solitude and detachment, a reality that only needed to be documented and not staged. An older line came back chasing me: “A wish? A disaster.” 

Somewhere within the voids and cacophony of overlaying thoughts and needs of one, a persisting solitude takes vengeance on the outside world. An egoistic projection (resonating a string of dominant political ideas) brings the crumbling reality of solitude to everyone else too.’

Within the challenges of the ongoing overall situation due to the COVID 19 pandemic the project explores the bleakest pockets of one’s mind. The installation is another chapter, fragment or stage of the ongoing story of isolation and developing rage.’ 

Jaša

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Surface Tensions 2020 presents art that is deeply immersed in the traumas, struggles and violence of our times, from the perspectives of the margins, in a collective act of creative resistance. 

Produced during the COVID19 global pandemic and bracketing two national lockdowns in the UK, ST20 Part II: ‘Contra Culture’ (May 2020 – January 2021) commissions 4 new pieces of sites-specific installations by: Stefan Bruggëmann, Ned Pooler, Bobbi Cameron and Jaša. 

Emerging from the plight of involuntary isolation, ‘Contra Culture’ constructs a locus of instability and finds fortitude in the perpetual struggle between the inner and outer worlds, navigating the darker recesses of the human psyche against the bifurcating psychosis that permeates the global brain. 

‘Contra Culture’ goes against the grain and defies the reactionary logic that exploits uncertainty and anxiety. When art is turning digital, it celebrates physical and material expressions as counterintuitive forms of resistance: It provokes through surrender and resignation; It touches and connects by closing in and retreating into silence; It reaps the cacophony of rage by creating voids; It uses humour, absurdity and sensuality to forgo indifference and apathy; It breaks out of the architecture of ‘order’ and ‘normality’ to find alternative paths of bewilderment and internal disorientation.