Phlegethon/Miczenie, 2005 Still from projected video. Installation and performance: Used books, printed texts, crayons, pencils, water containers, artist's body, visitors, projected video, sound. Courtesy Inter-Galerie, Potsdam (Berlin).
Phlegethon/Miczenie, Inter-Galerie, Potsdam (Berlin), March 4 - April 10, 2005
Phlegethon (River of Fire) is the river that
flows with fire which burns and does not consume (Virgil VI, 265, 551). It is one of
the five rivers in the realms of Hades. In Polish "milczenie" means "silence," "muteness"
connoting the lack of sound but also the inability to speak or convey.
Phlegethon/Miczenie installation incorporates performative sculpture,
video, and sound in two galleries. In one space, (Milczenie), most of the floor
is covered with old books, pages of paper with printed texts, and gradually accumulated
drawings. The books include used, pre-World War II classical literature and philosophy.
The texts on the pages will include the artist’s own writings and poems by Paul Celan.
Throughout the exhibition over long periods of time, the artist will crawl onto the paper
material and draw around her body. Visitors will be invited to join her in the process
of drawing or writing on the pages, or they can simply sit and read the books and texts
in silence. The sculpture will gradually change, and the process will be documented by
a video camera suspended from the ceiling.
The footage will be projected onto the wall in the other gallery and accompanied by the
pre-recorded sound of voices reading from the books and texts in the installation, and
sounds of fire and water overlapping at times with a male soprano voice singing fragment
of the Joseph Haydn “The Creation.” The idea of containing and being contained is reflected
in the passage between the two spaces, between the inside and the outside. For this piece the
artist worked with a male soprano vocalist, Anthony Roth Constanza.
