Mechanosia
Video installation, sculpture, performance
05.09 / 18h - 22h / opening, performance, DJ sets by Chlorys & YCS
06.09 / 13h-20h / exhibition on view
Rokolectiv presents Mechanosia, a newly commissioned installation at Rezidența9, blending five-channel video, sculpture and sound with a live performative intervention. Initiated by MarksMara (Jared Marks & Mara Ploscaru)
in collaboration with Lea Bertucci, Mara H. Grigoriu, Larisa Sitar and Eliza Trefaș.
The collaborative work takes as its starting point the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient astrological calculator discovered on a shipwreck in 1901 near the island of the same name. The finding consists of 82 bronze fragments - some with eroded gear teeth, others covered in ancient Greek inscriptions. Through a complex system of interlocking gears, researchers believe, it could calculate not only solar and lunar eclipses, but also the positions of all the known planets, on any given date, thousands of years in the past or future, making it the oldest known example of an analogue computer. Inspired by this long-lost technology, our team of artists traveled to the remote island in the south Aegean in search of its ghost and what it may tell us about human and other intelligences.
In the five video pieces that constitute the installation, the island's rugged land- and seascapes serve as backdrop for a playful, poetic conversation between three disembodied forms of intelligence: Ana Logia - the representative of calculative and logical thought, Biobaby - embodied, earthy intelligence, and Ghosty - the network present who is everywhere and nowhere. Throughout the videos, the three characters, who appear through voice and subtitles only, speculate on current events, sing together, and quote theorists and authors, among other things. Their interactions reveal the emergent quality of intelligence - that these varying manifestations produce knowledge and experiences with and through each other that they couldn't on their own.
The installation displays the two enigmatic sculptures that appear in the video designed by MarksMara in collaboration with Mara H. Grigoriu and Joshua Williams, while Larisa Sitar's Resplendent concrete bas-reliefs integrate unexpected flowing shapes in the narrative. Lea Bertucci’s mystical, playful soundscape accompanies the journey throughout the island and the choreography from the video leaks into the installation with a performative intervention by Jared Marks & Eliza Trefaș on the 5th of September.
Concept & artistic direction: MarksMara (Jared Marks & Mara Ploscaru)
Soundtrack: Lea Bertucci
Director of photography: Boróka Biró
Video editing: Dominique Mantilla
Color grading & graphic design: Nona Inescu
Sculpture & animation: Mara H. Grigoriu
Sculpture: Larisa Sitar
Costumes: Resi Bender
Performance: Eliza Trefaș & Jared Marks
Sound recording & editing: Patric Catani
3D modeling: Joshua Williams
Voices: Michelle Cheung, Elif Demiroğlu, Lucas Pagès
Poem by Dorin Ploscaru (translation Mara Ploscaru)
Produced by Rokolecitv
Co-financed by AFCN
This project is co-financed by AFCN. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not to be held responsible for the content of the project, nor for the ways in which the results of the project might be used. Those are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the grant.
