What would the world look like if there was no need for restoration? (2024)

Space installation, interactive projection / wood, paint, plaster boards, interactive projection installation, textile / 2400x1400x1200mm

A lot is asked from contemporary European human - it has to work, be opinionated, do sports, meditate, get 8 hours of sleep, eat healthy, cook, spend time with friends and family, have children, etc. Yet work is the most dominant commitment and other things are slowing down body's sufficiency. Here work is understood as damage done to the body and sleep, eating activities, sports and others are understood as restoration which allows more damages to come. Quality restoration allows quality damage, quality damage asks for quality restoration, etc.. The universal evolvement of the world, natural or human is slowed down by constant need of care, repair, restore. Only damaging the body or the world means death. In my work I focus on desire to live and evolve without restoration. My works (Damage and restoration and What would the world look like if there was no need for restoration?) explore what would mean if damages would allow life, as if there was no need for slowing down, repair, etc. Restoration is a universal phenomena, (probably) impossible to overcome. The escape from this phenomena I see in artworks and exhibition spaces.

Work What would the world look like if there was no need for restoration? is an extension of work Damage and restoration. It’s created from three parts - the wall, the interactive projection and the clay-box. Connecting points are the wall, standing at the same spot as the one before and excavated landscape, this time in a form of interactive projection. The wall in this work is fully formed, undamaged and a part of an artwork, while also providing exhibition space for other artworks. On one side it exhibits a projection, which is a part of the same installation and on the other side it creates an exhibition space for another artist’s work. Through the wall installation What would the world look like if there was no need for restoration? interacts and infiltrates itself into another artwork. The wall connects two different artworks, while allowing them to thrive in their own personal spaces.

This work was exhibited in the context of an annual semester exhibition during my studies at Ljubljana’s Academy of Fine Arts. The wall is protecting our visual field from atelier’s interior. During the years of my studies, we’ve struggled to change our ateliers into exhibition spaces, as their prior purpose was always too visible. Most annoying part of interior were boxes containing clay. Beside being annoying for exhibition preparation, their purpose is drastically fading, as the academy’s sculpture study program is changing, involving less clay-modeling techniques. They are fully purposed in the first year of studies, when students create human portraits and figures, later they are mostly abandoned as they are being replaced by other techniques. Mostly they are used as benches, object to sat upon. For the context of my work I partly created boxes into a sitting tool and partly I presented them becoming a monument, a memory of the past study-programs, becoming an artwork through becoming useless. The sitting part connects parts of installation by inviting visitors to sit and use the interactive projection.

Projection’s angled position creates an illusion of another wall. This wall allows interactive exploring similar to one used on platform Google Earth (see video). Projection depicts a landscapes made out of 4 photographs, layered one on top of another in Photoshop and then excavated using erasing tools. The process damages and repairs our viewing of selected landscapes. First, following the process of sedimentary rock accumulation landscapes are layered one on top of another, which makes all but the one on top disappear. The most hidden and therefore damaged photograph is the one on the bottom. Then parts of images above are erased, the most damaged by erasing is the one on top and undamaged by erasing is the one on the bottom, although it’s staying mostly hidden. Erasing allows the images bellow to be seen again. This excavated landscape shows the coexistence of different worlds, allowing each other to visibly exist through damages. Damages in this work are attempted to be seen as reparations.