2156
2-channel video installation; 24:20min
film by Saana Wang, Text by Harri Laakso, Music by Töölölab
The work has been presented at Centre Photographique d’Île-de-France, the Institut Français de Finlande, Gallery Hippolyte, and in the Related Realities exhibition at Backlight 2020, where it received the Majaoja Prize.
The work 2156, presented at Gallery Hippolyte, unfolded around questions of the nature of love, in dialogue with a text by Harri Laakso.
The exhibition traces a journey from the limits of human physicality, moving beyond the post-industrial condition and the remnants of coal mining, toward an abstract red space shaped by light and shadow.
The work interweaves scenes photographed in the Datong coal mines, references to Jules Didier and Jacques Guiaud’s painting of a hot-air balloon escape from Paris in 1870, the HI-SEAS IV Mars simulation experiment, and multiple narrative threads. Through a fragmentary dialogue between a woman and a man, the work engages with fundamental questions of existence and the contingency of life.
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On an autumn day, 3 October 1925, the torpedo boat S2 sank in the Gulf of Bothnia, claiming the lives of its entire crew. My grandfather was meant to be on board; instead, at the end of a night of celebration, he found himself in a police custody. Would I exist had he perished with the S2?
The Arts Promotion Centre Finland has kindly supported the exhibition at Gallery Hippolyte. The Finnish Cultural Foundation, Centre Photographique d’Île-de-France, and AVEK have supported the production of the work 2156.
Excerpt II
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