8.05–30.06.2024
The exhibition material is based on photos and film clips taken in the years 2022–2023 in the city of Narva and Kreenholm settlement. In 2022 Liina came to the NART residency to collect material for a film script based on Alexander Belyaev’s science fiction novel Amphibian Man on the subject of human fish. Her initial goal for working in Narva suddenly took a different dimension than she had initially intended. Russia’s war against Ukraine put the situation in a different context for me, revealing layers, the existence of which she could have sensed before, but rather preferred to disavow. Because of this, Liina had to rethink about a lot of things, almost everything in fact. She started to question all her collected photographic material and moving images related to the film and was ready to leave it completely. But now it seems to her that these hesitations and the tendency to give up could be the possible subject of my exhibition to be presented at the NART gallery. It will express and discuss the present feelings on making a film about amphibiousness taking Narva and Kreenholm as its settings. Both ecological and political aspects intertwine here to reflect the current state of uncertainty and fragility.
The exhibition presents a visual essay about an amphibious space (Narva as an example) by comparing and juxtaposing the photographic and film images taken in the border town environment and at the vast outdoor areas of a neglected factory. These collages and montages will be combined with written and oral texts to deliver my reflections and hesitations. Through the combination of visuals and text, new relationships between beings and places emerge, and these expanded constellations could broaden perspectives on the phenomena of border situations. Liina would like to create an Amphibian Atlas, where images and parts could form a whole with new manifesting chances. It would be an attempt to reflect the possibility of a survival simultaneously in two sufficiently different environments. Amphibiousness does not directly mean being human and fish at the same time. Rather, Liina understands by this transitional and border situations and the contacts arising from these crossings.
