37′
video, editing, text: Petra Zanki / editing assistance: Nives Sertić/music: Adam Semijalac
D.E Lucas: On P. Zanki video”Ephemerals” (2013.)
A slight acceleration of time makes the sky more watchable, the clouds shift and reform at a pace we can relate to, as slower dances let us notice more subtleties of motion and form – yet this accelerated sky still moves as a natural liquid, not with the cartoonish time-distortion of images wound up to the speed of a gimmick. The rhythms of clouds are fascinating because they occur in sensible patterns, yet without intention; the formations and changes are intimately related to the mountains that channel the air, the invisible sculptors of pressure and wind. We anticipate these transformations, but can never perfectly predict the actions of these mysteries, accepting the darkness that slowly settles as the sun descends or a nearing cloud envelops the eye. It’s our own good fortune to find beauty in these blind motions of the elements, these interactions of processes that continue through millennia whether we witness them or not.
Humanity shows its presence within the shadows by the appearance of small lights, intentional motions directed through the immensity of the darkness, self-convinced of a purpose that endures beyond the day. Distance gives the illusion that each steady light wavers, and when we let go of focus they blur into abstraction; the familiar signals of color-switching lamps at corners become flat and floating shapes without sense. Further abstracted, the shapes are only color and motion, and our minds may reach for familiar sense and find the swarms of sparks above a fire, or the sliding of microscopic cells in a Petri dish. Then only texture, light as a mindless touch, with ripples our instincts recognize in the bizarre logic of dreams: stars drip from the night sky, but we wake up to find it’s only raining.”
* (D.E. Lucas is an american writer living in France.)