Zwischenlandschaften 2 _ FREELAND | Nabuurs&VanDoorn

Zwischenlandschaften 2 _ FREELAND | Nabuurs&VanDoorn

“The images of various local sites – from a slightly clichéd lights on a water canal, to a gas station, to the interior of an abandoned production hall – overlap and shift at an extremely protracted pace, standing in contrast with the fast, vivid voice-over. The first-person narrative gives an account on the interventions Inge and Erwin conducted in the area of Picus and combines it with the fragments of carefully selected prose, embodying fully the potential of multivocality. With its secretive, theatrical tone, it makes us accomplices in the trespassing crime - there is a certain mystery being shared and a community of trust arises. The voice seems to guide us away from the main topic to the realm of mythology and fan-fiction only to, in the end, close the great circle of digression by linking it back to Picus.
One of the story lines, finely weaved into the voice-over, is the metamorphosis of Picus, the mythical king of Ausonia, whom the rejected nymph Circe turned into a woodpecker (picus virdis). The format of Ovidian metamorphosis finds a preposterous parallel here, on the site of local heritage in transition, where “nothing remained of Picus as he was except the name”. The myth of Picus serves as an introduction to the discussion on the heritage in transition, as well as connected to it power struggle and its influence on identity. It prompts a revaluation of the notion of shelter, which has gained particular gravity nowadays, in the face of viciously carnal problem of migration crisis. We are painfully reminded of the problems, that we wished would belong to the realm of the past, still persisting in many contexts. The work become a testimony of a forgone era, and at the same time a manifesto of today, in which the old hunt for progress of industrialism had been substituted with the strive for intellectual and informational dominance.
The artists have managed, impressively, to transform the physical labour, with all the burden of industrialism, commodification and abuse, into immaterial labour epitomised in the art practice, and especially interventionism. They have translated commodity into an art object and economic efficiency into aesthetic efficiency.”

Extract from talk by Alicja Melzacka on Zwischenlandschaften 2: