Mona Vătămanu & Florin Tudor
14 Mar - 10 May 2014
© Mona Vătămanu & Florin Tudor
All That Is Solid Melts Into Air - 2012-2013
16 mm and 8 mm transferred to digital video, 59 min
All That Is Solid Melts Into Air - 2012-2013
16 mm and 8 mm transferred to digital video, 59 min
MONA VĂTĂMANU & FLORIN TUDOR
46°19′41′′N 23°12′44′′E Geamăna
14 March - 10 May 2014
Galerie Andreas Huber is showing the exhibition "46°19′41′′N 23°12′44′′E Geamăna" by Mona Vătămanu und Florin Tudor from March 14 to May 10, 2014.
The geographical coordinates in the exhibition’s title refer to the shooting location and theme of the central film. Vătămanu and Tudor filmed “All That Is Solid Melts Into Air” in northwestern Romania, an area in which gold and other rare metals have been mined since pre-Roman times. Since the 1970s, however, the mining projects in Rosia Montana, Valea Sesii, and Geamăna have been extended recklessly, to the point of complete destroying the landscape and even entire villages. The images of habitat destruction by physical and chemical encroachments have something post-apocalyptic about them, an impression which is reinforced by the soundtrack. The film’s sound consists of two elements: fragments from political speeches by Salvador Allende and Thomas Sankara and a reading of the “Book of Revelation,” the last book of the Bible, the Apocalypse.
The few remaining inhabitants of this area find themselves faced with a mining project that ignores laws, focusing only on corporate interests. They have to move year after year, as the effects of the mining make more and more land uninhabitable. The artists’ research reveals a situation in which nothing is solid and real any more, where projects for compensating the damages come to nothing just as quickly as the landscape affected by the mining. “All That Is Solid Melts Into Air.”
In the exhibition’s other two works the artists take of the theme of dreaming. The film "21/06/1970 le voleur no2" shows the artist Ion Grigorescu. He reads from his diary. Most of the text deals with his dreams. "I dreamt the work of another artist" is an installation that Vătămanu and Tudor developed especially for the Kunsthalle Lissabon in 2013. In an interview with the two artists, they say: "We don't remember who dreamt that dream, nor who's the artist in the dream. It could have been an artist from the unconscious or somebody else, from a construction worker to a writer." In the installation, construction material is combined with the photograph of a photograph that was taken from a rubbish dump. The photo shows a man in an exotic landscape. "The image led us to some connection between geographical areas, some narrative that could link our modernist utopia in Eastern Europe with other stories maybe in Latin America or elsewhere. That man disappeared together with his own history, it could seem that he never lived, it might be that utopia never existed, at the same time there was something promising in that dream, the worker or the writer will start their work again."
Mona Vătămanu (born in 1968 in Romania) and Florin Tudor (born in 1974 in Switzerland) have been working together since 2000. They use various media such as film, photography, painting, performance, and site-specific projects. Their work deals with contemporary developments, above all phenomena of the Communist and post-Communist time. Of particular importance to them is their interest in architecture and its role in the exercising of political power and for forms of individual and collective memory. In recent years they have had solo exhibitions in Lisbon, Berlin, Brussels, New York, and in the Secession in Vienna (“All the Power to the Imagination!” 2009).
46°19′41′′N 23°12′44′′E Geamăna
14 March - 10 May 2014
Galerie Andreas Huber is showing the exhibition "46°19′41′′N 23°12′44′′E Geamăna" by Mona Vătămanu und Florin Tudor from March 14 to May 10, 2014.
The geographical coordinates in the exhibition’s title refer to the shooting location and theme of the central film. Vătămanu and Tudor filmed “All That Is Solid Melts Into Air” in northwestern Romania, an area in which gold and other rare metals have been mined since pre-Roman times. Since the 1970s, however, the mining projects in Rosia Montana, Valea Sesii, and Geamăna have been extended recklessly, to the point of complete destroying the landscape and even entire villages. The images of habitat destruction by physical and chemical encroachments have something post-apocalyptic about them, an impression which is reinforced by the soundtrack. The film’s sound consists of two elements: fragments from political speeches by Salvador Allende and Thomas Sankara and a reading of the “Book of Revelation,” the last book of the Bible, the Apocalypse.
The few remaining inhabitants of this area find themselves faced with a mining project that ignores laws, focusing only on corporate interests. They have to move year after year, as the effects of the mining make more and more land uninhabitable. The artists’ research reveals a situation in which nothing is solid and real any more, where projects for compensating the damages come to nothing just as quickly as the landscape affected by the mining. “All That Is Solid Melts Into Air.”
In the exhibition’s other two works the artists take of the theme of dreaming. The film "21/06/1970 le voleur no2" shows the artist Ion Grigorescu. He reads from his diary. Most of the text deals with his dreams. "I dreamt the work of another artist" is an installation that Vătămanu and Tudor developed especially for the Kunsthalle Lissabon in 2013. In an interview with the two artists, they say: "We don't remember who dreamt that dream, nor who's the artist in the dream. It could have been an artist from the unconscious or somebody else, from a construction worker to a writer." In the installation, construction material is combined with the photograph of a photograph that was taken from a rubbish dump. The photo shows a man in an exotic landscape. "The image led us to some connection between geographical areas, some narrative that could link our modernist utopia in Eastern Europe with other stories maybe in Latin America or elsewhere. That man disappeared together with his own history, it could seem that he never lived, it might be that utopia never existed, at the same time there was something promising in that dream, the worker or the writer will start their work again."
Mona Vătămanu (born in 1968 in Romania) and Florin Tudor (born in 1974 in Switzerland) have been working together since 2000. They use various media such as film, photography, painting, performance, and site-specific projects. Their work deals with contemporary developments, above all phenomena of the Communist and post-Communist time. Of particular importance to them is their interest in architecture and its role in the exercising of political power and for forms of individual and collective memory. In recent years they have had solo exhibitions in Lisbon, Berlin, Brussels, New York, and in the Secession in Vienna (“All the Power to the Imagination!” 2009).