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Sergej Vutuc

A one-time installation tailor fit for the 2021 Belgrade, Serbia-based independent skate film festival: Summit of the Non-Aligned absorbed the several stories of an opera house to, out of many, visually tell the one of control, trust and balance versus danger and hazard via the layering of photographic images documenting the successive, multiple attempt at a perilous physical maneuver in a display of kaleidoscopic dimensions. The spectator is subjected to a sensory flood of crucial instants where the human mind really decides on success or failure, death or survival, one path or another as different images cover the entirety of their given space, thereby creating their own pattern and tying together difference and repetition, unicity and variation, progress and stagnation around the sense of discomfort brought by a terrifyingly coherent harmony. Distances get blurred as plays on proximity in between the visitor and the documented action distort the former’s usual sense of space, driving them to reconsider the validity of their own reality as the narration of one tale grows into its own microcosm. More stimuli comes from the fragmented projection of Super 8 film - paralleled with references to, and decomposed traces of the physical photographic processing - coupled with the arhythmic, improvised resonance of the live sound performance. The film documents frames from the explorative peregrinations of skateboarders as they cover, decipher and interpret urban terrain. In a different space, images from « THE BODY, PAINTING AS I SAW IT » introduce the chronological blender that is the product of the successive, approximate recapturing of each of them via reproduction techniques historically bound to different eras and their respective technical advancements, being Super 8 stills of footage of repeatedly, variously digitalized 8mm film frames. The soul and skill of multiple generations are superimposed at the same time as their textures and aesthetics, bringing together different voices to chant a distorted truth in unison. Final disorientation comes with the exhibition of 8mm film photography silkscreen printed on metal sheets using corrosion techniques, hinting to the work of time on matter and cultural transmission - as if sentient of its own narrative abilities.

Text by: Aymeric Nocus