The exhibition Videograms. Porosity is open until 4th December 2021 at SODAS 2123.
Videograms. Porosity is a video space that reflects on the relationship between architectural forms and inner (human) worlds. Porosity here is a way of measuring the void, the emptiness, both physical and personal; yet it also may denote the permeability of both architectural partitions and social boundaries.
The distinction between public and private worlds is an invention of modernity, when architecture takes on the task of creating the inner world of an individual, which results not only in different typologies of interior spaces, but also in the emergence of a particular “topography” of the inner world. The book Interiors and Interiority (ed. Ewa Lajer-Burcharth and Beate Söntgen; De Gruyter, 2016) draws attention to Walter Benjamin’s take on the subject of the bourgeois class that was emerging at the time and who was the inhabitant of modern architectures: these interior spaces were instrumental in establishing the subject’s relationship with the outside world, withdrawing from it, or gaining control over it. Almost half a century later, the second-wave feminism questioned the naturalised demarcation of the private and the political and claimed that personal is political.
Porosity started by thinking about artistic engagement with the instability of the distinction between inner and outer worlds, seeking to register imprints of the personal on different architectural surfaces. In the exhibition, the works by Sam Williams and Laura Grace Ford, Robin Vanbesien, Shirin Sabahi and Daniel Schwarz open up different perspectives on the subject of porosity in relation to architecture, urban and social structures.
Interior spaces also become the environment for a special relationship between moving images and the viewer which keeps unfolding throughout the pandemic. Without the collectivity of cinema, the consumption of moving images became a very individualised, intimate practice. The “Videograms” bedding cover set displayed in the space was developed both as an artist edition and a functional design object as a collaboration by artist Vladas Suncovas, graphic designer Marek Voida and curators Monika Lipšic and Viktorija Šiaulytė. It was conceived precisely as a cover for an individualised consumption of films. At the same time, the print of diagrams on its surface may work like a map of the genealogy of ideas and innovations that represent the desire to be teleported to cinematic, virtual or imaginary worlds.
The exhibition Videograms. Porosity features When We Live Alone by Daniel Schwarz. It is the second in a three-part short documentary series, conceived by Giovanna Borasi, directed by Daniel Schwartz, and produced by the Canadian Centre for Architecture. This series examines the ways in which changing societies, new economic pressures and increasing population density are affecting the homes of various communities.
Shirin Sabahi’s Lung is the name of the air dome that roofs the tennis courts in David Foster Wallace’s novel The Infinite Jest. “The ceiling was breathing. It bulged and receded. It swelled and settled.” Lung observes the preparation of a Berlin public swimming pool for its reopening in Summer 2020. The one-take film is the byproduct of Lung (work in progress). It was shot on an unattended camera left inside the deflating air dome that had covered the open-air pool during the colder seasons. Meanwhile, the construction workers, as well as the film crew, are at work outside.
Robin Vanbesien’s the wasp and the weather was created while exploring an archive of poetry written by youngsters at the former youth centre Rzoezie (Tamazight for “wasp”) in Mechelen (Belgium). The authors themselves and contemporary poets revisit, recite and discuss their selection of poems, probing their resonance in today’s social and political “weather”.
Island by Sam Williams & Laura Grace Ford brings together the moving image practice of Sam Williams and the narrative writing of Laura Grace Ford. Together they have produced a collage of footage captured in London, Berlin and Marseille where bodies connect through remembered gestures, reaching for familiarity through sensory and temporal networks. Drawing on cognitive mapping and the concept of the dérive, this work interrogates place by mapping the psychic contours of the city, unearthing spaces that evade the neoliberal pressure to be an entrepreneurial, self-promoting individual; in the encounter with other life-worlds you escape your own reflection, inhabit other minds.
The exhibition Videograms. Porosity is part of Videograms, a festival of video art, artists’ films and moving image practices.
Curators: Monika Lipšic ir Viktorija Šiaulytė
Architect: Vladas Suncovas
Graphic design: Marek Voida
Communication and public relations: Indraja Vaitkūnaitė
Visiting hours:
Monday: 12:00 – 18:00
Tuesday – Saturday: 12:00 – 20:00
Sunday: Closed
The exhibition Videograms. Porosity is organised by Videograms and SODAS2123. Videograms is supported by Lithuanian Film Centre, Lithuanian Council for Culture and Nordic Culture Fund. Partners: Skalvija Cinema Center, Vilnius City Municipality, Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association.
Photography: Andrej Vasilenko