Verfünfungseffekt
A video-multigraph, or a ‘selfie-turned-self-referential-groupie’ in quintuplicate format.
The photo-multigraph, discovered during a media-archaeological investigation into optical illusions, opened the door to an enchanted world of cloned appearances. In Verfünfungseffekt, we use the medium of video to create a kaleidoscopic portrait-in-motion where the perspective-shifting shards of ego are recorded in a synchronized performance of solipsist intersubjectivity.
Our video-multigraph allows for the compositing of tiny offsets in time-shifting delays applied to one or several of the mirrored selves—shattering the cloned perfection, as well as the conformity, of the multiple presences. Extreme isolation warps the brain, and when you are truly on your own, the mind may push your sense of reality down a labyrinth of Kafkaesque corridors.
Concocting imaginary companions is not the mere product of an involuntary hallucination; it is a magic technique for handling the “crisis of presence.” Shipwrecked seafarers marooned on deserted islands have been known not only to anthropomorphize inanimate objects but also to create illusory cronies to share their solitude with.
Our screen-quarantined card-playing castaway is stuck in an endless loop of auto-referencing. One starts looking for the slightest discrepancies: a movement of the hand, a finger lingering on the deck of cards a tad too long. While one’s mind is stuck on a single detail, the other versions of oneself have moved along and are now staring at each other—bewildered by the identical look on identical faces.
The duo is based in Stockholm, Sweden, and on the island of Rab, Croatia.
Performing Pictures consists of Geska Brečević and Robert Brečević. The artist duo moves freely between different media: film/video, photography, and physical objects. In their works, the stillness of contemporaneity is compressed into dot imprints of extended moments. The resulting “pictures that perform” are snapshots and stylized motion portraits that establish a liminal space between viewer and image.
The two artists create cinéapparitions – choreographic figures that express laconic gestures and utterances in an attempt to stand not only outside but also alongside time. They draw inspiration from ritual practices to produce the ‘historical weightlessness’ required for re-entry into mundane time.
https://performingpictures.art/
https://www.instagram.com/performingpictures/