E V A P E T R I Č
ART INSTALATIONS by EVA PETRIČ
SOUNDeSCAPES-
Lullaby for Drones
Photon Gallery Ljubljana, June 2020
Welcome to my exhibition SOUNDeSCAPES - Lullaby for drones, which was inspired by the thesis of the famous philosopher George Berkeley: "Just because you can't hear something, this doesn't mean you can't see it, and just because you can't see something, this doesn't mean that you can't hear it."
From this thesis it follows, what sound is and what it means to hear sound.
A more scientific explanation of what sound is and what it means to hear sound, was later based on the definition of what consciousness is.
With this exhibition I want to remind us to not fall asleep like drones in apathy and numbness - but to take advantage of the opportunity given to us, humans to perceive the world around us through emotional synesthesia on multiple levels ... to connect more of our senses and expand our awareness, our involvement in nature ... to be able to not only see images but also hear them, and likewise, to not only hear the sound, but we also see it.
More specifically, if we could hear how global warming sounds like - what would it sound like? And would our actions then, differ compared to those which we are taking now in relation to it?
ANGEL'S SHADOW
Anitque Baptistry, Piran, Slovenia, 2015
Angel's Shadow, site specific sound-textile-shadows-echoes-floating installation
at the anitque Baptistry of St. John the Baptist in Piran, Slovenia in the frame of Culture.Point Piran 2015 - link to the video and sound:
The 21st century Angel does not have wings - instead it is an angel in floating, flying in the sea, swimming in the sky, in the current of contemporary space - hunter for light, giver of whispers, keeper of wishes - sometimes stinging, sometimes just caressing, hunting the bad - protecting the good.
Angels, like Jellyfish are both beautiful and deadly at the same time. They are graceful and seductive. Touching the Angel’s Shadow, likewise a jellyfish, brings sensitivity to water energy (emotions), understanding of the value of floating rather than swimming through trying emotional times, proper use of softness (not being rigid), ability to become untangled from the webs of peril in life, acceptance and faith.
Shadows are like emotions: we all have them, but we are often unaware of them, or do not notice them… and we often push emotions into the shadow… are emotions the Angel’s shadow?
THIS SPACE IS A BOX
Display of the Century:
Friedrich Kiesler and Contemporary Art,
Austria Culture Forum New York, 2015
To how many exponents can I reduce existing physical space and/or transform it into many more? By “playing” with various perspectives enabled by various media, I try to acquire the bird's perspective, the closest to multidimensional perception of space.
This space is a box challenges me to search within perhaps the most confining of “boxes”: the space of the body and the space of religion. Their interaction is what interests me, the psychological abstract landscape upon which they exist and particularly the emotions that defuse out of their interaction, offering potential new space(s) - emotional landscape(s) instead of confining boxes.
Video concerns itself with physical space of Istanbul, Buenos Aires, and Bled, Slovenia, the psychological space of inner and outer self, social space of common beliefs, taboo space of religious beliefs, spiritual space, metaphysical space, abstract space, and last but not least ephemeral space of emotions. With its exposure in a given space it frees the shadow of its body and exposes it as its own space – the space of emotion where the shadow acquires the features of a 3D body while the body looses them. The shadow as emotion becomes a space of its own with potentiality, or gr@y matter, governing it.
To perceive of this space as a box, or to instead perceive of this box as a space is up to us, up to our ability to exponent space(s), to hear, to see that even within the most confined of boxes there is possibility for perception of space.
playGROUND
Jean Nouvel Design Tower, Vienna, Austria, 2014
What is our home, where is our home? What defines the concept of home? Territory, language, culture, traditions, family, relatives, physical borders?
Our home exists on different levels: we, as a web of people, are at home on Earth, our Earth is at home in our Solar system, which was left by Voyager 1 for the first time in Sept. 2013, entering into interstellar space.
At the same time we are at home in 'our inner cellular worlds'. Caught in lace compositions, in the delicate webs that tie us together, we are a part of a greater web - the world wide intercellular/stellar web.
As we look upwards into the "stellar sky", we find ourselves at the same time being part of "inner cellular worlds", caught into lace compositions, the delicate webs that tie us together and make us a part of a web in the world wide intercellular stellar webs.
My web like lace assemblages made of hundreds of vintage lace and handmade crochet pieces, of thousands of knots that tie wishes, memories and connections, remind me of the world wide web, initiated years ago at CERN, European Nuclear Research Centre. Thus it is my homage to the fundamental research of studying the components of matter and antimatter and the forces, holding them together as huge detectors at CERN study these collisions and thousands of subatomic particles are emerging from them.
IN between SPACE
Burgkapelle/ Museum Moderner Kunst Kaernten, Klagenfurt, Austria, 2014
IN-between-SPACE my interpretation of the results of the Big Bang,
Ambiental installation (inspired by the Hubble image depicting newly formed stars that are blowing a cavity in the centre of a star forming region N90), consisting of
-
Interstellar and intracellular membranes (2014, textile: old and new pieces of lace from family heritage and pieces bought at various flea markets around the world),
-
Interstellar Lullaby (2014, sound work, 17’40 min’’, on a loop: concept and voice by Eva Petrič, interstellar space sound from Voyager, as provided by NASA; music (piano, clarinet and various sounds) by Matija Strniša)
-
hungry fresco (2012, video projection of 26 analog photographs, 14’34’’, on a loop), in the Burgkapelle
Excerpt from the artist's statement: »Through hematomas of intracellular to interstellar membranes “hungry frescoes” appear, disappear and then again reappear in the unique rhythm set forth by the Interstellar Lullaby, questioning not only what we see and what is looking at us, but also all that is sounded for us. Are we the residue of a Big Bang resulting in a hematoma?
We are connected, tied with knots and loops of various kinds like the threads in the lace of the hematoma. Our actions affect and are reflected in others… similarly as a hematoma on the skin at one location affects the whole body. Whom and what are we affecting by our existence?«
From the review of Dr. Thomas Miessgang:
In-between-Space refers to a particular dimension, with an extension that expands between outer space and the mystique of the inner mind; between the hot and the cold existential zones; between earth-grounded existence and connectedness; and to the subjectively felt self-loss in the vastness of the universe: “Ground Control to Major Tom...”
In-between-Space deals with musical and electro-acoustic means, and engages in a dialectic of ontological stability and transcendental homelessness. The multilateral sound-pool addresses the always precarious relationship between man and machine, the conflict between the relentlessness imposed by computer algorithms and the vulnerability of the human voice….
21st CENTURY ANGEL
Bildraum 07, Vienna, Austria, 2014
Do Angels dwell among us, walk among us, listen to us? Do we dwell among Angels, walk amongst them, listen to them? Who are the contemporary Angels, what are they? What do they look like? Is the contemporary Angel in need of wings? Could simply its reflection, a shadow, a stain suffice? If we were to look at mathematics for the answer to offer us the most objective representation of the contemporary Angel, then what could be the mathematical formula of it? Can we create it using the formula of my periodic table of shadowed emotions?
The 21st century Angel does not have wings - instead it is a metaphor for the immune system of our bodies, its ability to flow in the current of contemporary space, to acquire nano qualities to pass membranes of all sorts as well as to act as their gatekeepers, preventing harmful agents to pass and allowing free passage for the beneficial ones.
Angels aka the immune system act independently, yet they are reflections of our emotions expressed as shadows, staining us. We are stains, stained by emotions, making us markers of impulses that move through us. We are a collection of membranes through which emotions pass and sometimes, when they are repressed, they explode in a hematoma.
By definition, our immune system is a system of biological structures and processes within our body that protects us against disease. To function properly, our immune system must detect a wide variety of agents, spanning from viruses to parasitic worms, and further, it must distinguish them from our own healthy tissue.
Can we hear our immune system, its collection of residues whispering, murmuring, vibrating within tissue membranes, luring this angel, dissected in us to protect, shelter, defend?
Our immune system is our angel but can also become a hound if not treated properly. So don’t put your body and especially your emotions into the shadows – rather observe it carefully and in a loving manner – in a dialogue – a constantly developing dialogue.
human organ CONSTELLATION Kuenstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria, 2014
What are the borders of our bodies, our emotions, our mind?
Where does “I” end and where does “You” begin? And where does “You” end and where does “I” begin? If a part of my body is transplanted into another body after I die, do I really die, or does my life continue? And when I think and my thoughts flow freely, does this mean that I move beyond my body, my existence expanding?
human organ CONSTELLATION highlights our existence here and now. Mediating between the seen and unseen, the material and the immaterial, our existence is reflected on the expo level outside, through the stellar constellation and on the nano level inside, through the cellular constellation.
Emotions, ungraspable and immaterial as shadows are, make us aware of our material existence - our bodies - here and now.
Human Organ Constellation is the output of my project in cooperation with the transplantation team of the Vienna's General Hospital AKH in 2014. In this project I explored the theme of borders - borders of human body, consciousness, existence...
It was displayed at the Kuenstlerhaus in Vienna in the summer of 2014, to highlight the 60-anniversary of the first successful live human organ donation transplantation,
Lighthouse 1 - 7, 2014, mixed media (light cubus, analog photographs and digital photographs combined on acrylic glass plates)
Fibrin, 2014, video projection, on a loop
Petri dish, 2014, sound, 5’34’’, on a loop.
WHITE BOX
Media Nox, Maribor, Slovenia, 2013
White box challenges me to search within perhaps the most confining of “boxes”: the space of the body and the space of religion. Their interaction is what interests me, the psychological abstract landscape upon which they exist and particularly the emotions that, like it or not, defuse out of their interaction, offering potential new space(s) - emotional landscape(s) instead of confining boxes.
As a video and as an exhibition project white box exposes the shadow as an ephemeral space of emotions. With its exposure in a given space it frees the shadow of its body and exposes the shadow as its own space – the space of emotion where the shadow acquires the features of a 3D body while the body loses them. The shadow as emotion becomes a space of its own with potentiality, or gr@y matter, governing it. Having awareness of this space can guard against manipulation of emotions, which is especially common in our zeit geist in the space of advertising billboards.
TRANSapPARENT
transparencies Kuenstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria 2013
“Photography has to do with light and shade and here, of course, with the topic of sometimes ironic and spaced-out self-expression. Eva Petric is present in all recordings, from the utmost realistic representation to the transformation of the material into an intangible abstract; a dissolution of the material body to a fine trace. Her obsession over her own image is not so much one of narcissism, (as a superficial view might suggest), but rather a questioning of her own image. Her work provides an analysis of the mirror function of the photographic image and reflects a type of Platonic shadow-picture philosophy. Aesthetic interplay using the motif of the double, (in reality and of shadows of reality), is not only an aesthetic end in itself, but certainly also to be interpreted existentially.”
Peter Weiermair, art curator and publisher, former director of the Museum of Modern Art Bologna, Italy
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TELEPHONE BOOK
International Centre for Graphic Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2011
3-chanel video and sound installation, made specially for the 9+9 exhibition at the International Centre for Graphic Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Nov. 22 2010 - Feb. 8 2011 - where I was one of the nine artists invited to reinterpret artists' books from the center's depot. I chose the work of Argentinean artist Andrea Moccia Giurnalia - Poesia blanda series, 2003 as my reinterpretation object. I created three videos and thus a video installation called on the other side of the telephone book, with footage I took in Buenos Aires of Parque de Memoria, built just two years ago with about 30,000 thousand names of "the disappeared" - Los Desaparacidos during the dirty war years in Argentina (1976 - 1983). Artist's book of Andrea Moccia reminded me of a brush. In reality her book is a cut off telephone book from Buenos Aires dated 2003 (the year that the amnesty was annulled and when people could first speak in public about what happened between the years 1976 - 1983. In one video i am brushing/erasing my shadow that looms still to this day over them in present day Argentina. Besides my video I also made a sound reinterpretation of Andrea Moccia's book which is me saying all the names of the disappeared - Los Desaparecidos, that are being projected on the wall opposite of the headphones with my voice and exhibited artist's book, singing them in the form of a lullaby.
THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME ... Heimat – Domovina
Museum Moderner Kunst Kaernten, Klagenfurt, Austria, 2010
What is our home, where is our home? What defines the concept of home? Territory, language, culture, traditions, family, relatives, physical borders?
Different look, different education, different language, same dirt, same light... same planet, with state borders determining homelands becoming obsolete, borders being trespassed by migrations of people, plants, animals, traditions, fashion, ideas, air, weather, clouds, music, food... food.... food for the thoughts, food for physical existence.
My installation shows the migration of rice, covering the continents of shadows, remnants of different traditions, occupying the whole planet, making the whole planet one home for us all.
Rice that grows only on certain parts of the world, but exists as food all over the world, illustrates existential migration. Along with the overall migration of people and ideas the concept of home loses it’s meaning, becoming replaced by collective unconsciousness. In the present-day world of migrations and shifting realities, places, cultures, identities, state borders and their protection become obsolete, the problem of coexistence is gaining instead in its meaning.