The title ‚1+1-1’ is a definition for an action that results in increasing the amount of something, or in value added. Therefore it seems to realize the basic goal that has to be achieved in the economy that surrounds us, including the cultural one. We could say that action itself is the result. Its specific ‚algebra‘ is defined by the fact that the outcome is bigger than its components and the fact, that in this form it can repeat itself indefinitely.

The project by Karolina Brzuzan and Piotr Adamski however, is not about the mathematical operation. The task that they give themselves is to analyze a certain equation, the parts of which include the lack of self-control and rhytm. It is the analysis of the effort to control what is uncontrolled.

In the situation presented in a dual-channel video projection, the rhytm of tics thickens in an uncontrollable way, and the whole struggle to control the gestures tugging at the body, the sounds escaping from it, is ended with an unexpected onset of sleep. Usually sleeping means exclusion of information, here however it is a suspension of what the consciousness cannot control. Waking up means exposure to what is impossible to control.

The scene in the video projection is touching because its hero is human, but Karolina and Piotr are interested in more general rules of the emergence of what is uncontrolled. They examine it by exposure to happenings that the hero cannot control. In a mysterious object, the artists build a situation where, in a regular rhytm, the sleep is provoked by the effects of chemical substances. Fruit flies, that every now and then fall tired from impossed sleep, are the character of this action. The chaotic mobility of the flies is put to sleep.

What is uncontrolled, for Brzuzan and Adamski, is also deeply natural (and which in people reveals itself through ticks impossible to tame in their chaotic flickering). Although the video projection is sort of an observation, although the object with fruit flies is a ‚laboratory‘ experiment, then the shadow projected by a piece of industrial rubber thrown onto the floor is an almost ‚social‘ experiment. Spectators are exposed to the influence of a shape that causes escapist behavior in some creatures. The artists experiment with the uncontrolled impulse to ran away, they provoke a situation that can get out of control. Maybe so that we wake up from the narcosis that culture immerses us in.

curator: Kamil Kuskowski

Exhibition accompanying 9. International Festival of Photography in Łódź.

Actual Art Zona / Zona Sztuki Aktualnej
Tymienieckiego 3, Łódź
www.zona-art.pl