work/arbeit/rabota, 2007
Dur: 15 mins
HD DVCPro

Peter Suchin, ARTREVIEW, 2007
"In the video recorded in a single 15-minute take and titled Work/Arbeit/Rabota, seven people of various ages, races and dispositions wander around the blacked-out room, followed by the camera and its operator, both occasionally visible within the mirrors, an autocue positioned above the lens feeding the stalked participant their lines, When the camera closes in on someonem he or show speaks directly to it: "I had this dream. I was superman and my father was a clairvoyant," utters a young blonde woman. Others talk of revolution, of the economic system, or ask, "What is the work? We bought some work, we made some work." Individuals and utterances are by these methods and devices, divorced and dislocated; we know the actors lines have been chosen for them. This crude ventriloquism takes a further twist when one discovers that the script was assembled from interviews the members of Szuper Gallery (Susanne Clausen and Pawlo Kerestey) carried out with each other, and that the people in the video stand in, in some not entirely clarified manner for the artists at an earlier stage of their by now extensive, somewhat variegated artistic practice."

Pressrelease

Artist's Studio is a 1-year project located in a Victorian House in Knightsbridge, in a large apartment generously donated by a benefactor. Looking specifically at the idea of exclusive and yet informal dialogues between artists, 7 artists have been invited over the 1-year period to propose individual projects (lasting up to 6 weeks each) that undermine or interface with the space of the apartment / studio. A programme of talks and events will accompany the project, which will result in a publication.

Artists' Studio presents a new site-specific video installation by Szuper Gallery (Susanne Clausen & Pawlo Kerestey). Working with a group of actors/performers in the Artists' Studio apartment in a specifically designed set, Szuper Gallery have divided the lower space into a dark mirrored studio/living space and the upper space into a light gallery. The video evolves as the performers move through and inhabit the plush Knightsbridge location. They are rehearsing an interview, focusing on the context of the space, Szuper Gallery's history as a commercial gallery and its alleged relations to the Post-Soviet Mafia

The video performance deconstructs the process of performing an act; concentrating on entrances, rehearsals, documentation, the set, the mechanics of the space, repetition and looping, re-enactment, awkwardness and delay. With an emphasis on notions of time and how artistic practice and experience is constructed.