On Distance and Intimacy

The exhibition On Distance and Intimacy showcases works made in isolation. The Covid-19 pandemic forced humans to remain apart. In this new situation, intimacy pressed close, organizing our experience of space and especially of the outwards.

Dragos Hanciu’s photographic work A to B and the collaborative multimedia work Telepoetics by Patricia Morosan and Bianca Oana (with soundscapes by Vlad Fenesan) are notes towards a reconceptualization of intimacy in light of new ways we can encounter it outwardly.

ARTIST STATEMENT “TELEPOETICS”

TELEPOETICS is a collaborative project which experiments with communication at distance. Initiated by Patricia Moroșan & Bianca Oana,  the project contemplates the notion of transmission and reception. Started during the first lockdown of the 2020 pandemic and pursued for over 8 months, the project proposes an extended transfer of thoughts which
underlines the paradox of shared distance. The idea that two bodies may influence each other, or act in concert, without actually being in contact, is the subject of the artistic research and telepathic experimentation.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Dragos Hanciu

Having John’s Cage performance 4’33” as an inspiration, the photographer is trying to visualize the apparent silence of the long and solitary trips where one suddenly remains in a non-place, suspended with his own thoughts. The crumble of the engines, the murmur of the terminals, the hiss of the waiting rooms become the soundtrack of the trip, and the white noise on which thoughts lean while moving from A to B.

Graphical waveforms of white noise extracted from field recordings made during these trips are overlaid with photographs from the same trips depicting waveform-like looking landscapes, as well as other passengers looking at them out the window, or simply gazing, absorbed by their own thoughts – just like the photographer.

A thin floating veil like a waveform fluttering over the photographic print suggests the ephemeral spirit of the trips like the veil’s ever-changing shape through its gentle moves.

Vlad Fenesan

Hearing is a way of touching at a distance, so in this sense Telepoetics sound pieces draw inspiration from the early experimental radio art of the 70’s and frame a suspended reality where the two interlocutors can meet and touch. In this regard sound is envisioned as a bridge between the receiver and transmitter and vice-versa.

Sound is a fragment of a remembered past, addressing our deep-seated auditory memories and transporting us back into a particular place and time. Sometimes sounds can fuse together in such a way that you can’t distinguish one from another. Or, there can be a dance between them that almost functions in the same way as theme and variation in classical music. The sounds are not alone but have a kind of  kinship with the texts and the sonorous qualities of the voices.

Duration of the exhibition 16.03. – 26.03.2022

12-14 contemporary