Fear, Feet, and Fire

In the RU House on Gov­er­nors Island, Res­i­den­cy Unlim­it­ed opens the group exhi­bi­tion Fear, Feet and Fire, pre­sent­ing the works of three inter­na­tion­al artists: Ana Biol­chi­ni (Brazil), Bojan Sto­jčić (Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina), Adam Vačkář (Czech Repub­lic). This exhi­bi­tion is orga­nized by RU’s artis­tic direc­tor, Lu Solano, and on view June 14 – 16 & 21 – 23 with an open­ing recep­tion on June 15.

Ana Biol­chi­ni offers a new instal­la­tion of her series Feet of the World. Dur­ing her res­i­den­cy, Biol­chi­ni devel­oped a site-spe­cif­ic work that invites view­ers to immerse in an expe­ri­ence with­in them­selves, deep­en­ing their con­nec­tion with the work and the con­tem­pla­tive ambiance of Gov­er­nors Island.

Dur­ing the peri­od of the exhi­bi­tion, Biol­chi­ni will per­form a dura­tional per­for­mance with chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Mark Bankin and mem­bers of his com­pa­ny (click here to see details of the per­for­mance). The process of gen­er­at­ing move­ment vocab­u­lary recre­ates the med­i­ta­tive and rit­u­al­is­tic process­es through which Biol­chi­ni cre­ates her art­works. In this col­lab­o­ra­tion, Biol­chi­ni will guide Bankin’s dancers into a new state of con­scious­ness by psy­chi­cal­ly pro­mot­ing con­nec­tions in their bod­ies in move­ment while they inter­act with her instal­la­tion. This way Feet of the World aims to fos­ter a pro­found dia­logue between the art­work and the site.

Bojan Sto­jčić intro­duces Inbe­tween, an instal­la­tion that con­sists of two mir­rors placed oppo­site each oth­er in an emp­ty room. Each mir­ror has a mir­ror writ­ing sen­tence, read­able as reflec­tions in the oppo­site mirror:

Fear of Amer­i­ca.
Fear for America.

Inbe­tween was con­ceived dur­ing Stojčić’s res­i­den­cy pro­gram in NY. For him, the per­cep­tion from the out­side is that America’s for­eign pol­i­cy and its mil­i­tary, finan­cial and polit­i­cal sup­port to cer­tain coun­tries have trag­ic con­se­quences for oth­er nations. Mean­while inside, its inter­nal pol­i­tics present times of extreme polar­iza­tion, and even divi­sion between its two polit­i­cal par­ties. A real­i­ty that sur­pass­es Amer­i­can ter­ri­to­ries to parts of the world under its influ­ence. Both out­side and inside Amer­i­ca are reflect­ing with­in each other.

Placed on his­tor­i­cal Gov­er­nors Island, Inbe­tween aims to estab­lish nev­er end­ing rela­tion­ships of exchange between two fears: that of giv­ing and that of taking.

Adam Vačkář presents the instal­la­tion Gos­samer Weeds and the 14 min film Burn­ing Ground.

Gos­samer Weeds responds to his recent dis­cus­sions with botanist Dr. Blossey (Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty) on ideas if humans are part of nature or not. For Blossey, there’s no dif­fer­ence between human-made (e.g. asphalt) and nat­ur­al. The instal­la­tion presents both nat­ur­al and human-made as one enti­ty and aims to dis­cuss def­i­n­i­tions of nature.

Burn­ing Ground was record­ed just after a fire was ignit­ed by a park ranger in the Czech Switzer­land Nation­al Park, a nat­ur­al reserve in the Czech Repub­lic. The images leave the view­er with a burnt apoc­a­lyp­tic land­scape. Through an orig­i­nal inter­view writ­ten and filmed by the artist with the botanist, Dr. Michal Hejc­man, the film explores the very dif­fer­ent, bio­log­i­cal dynam­ics and process­es of the fire, which remains one of the fun­da­men­tal regen­er­a­tive process­es of a land­scape. The film reveals the com­plex­i­ty of the bio­log­i­cal process­es with a pos­i­tive nar­ra­tive about the sig­nif­i­cance of wild­fires, while por­tray­ing burned land­scapes com­mon­ly per­ceived as a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter. By doing so, it shows an unex­pect­ed bio­log­i­cal nar­ra­tive to events com­mon­ly per­ceived dif­fer­ent­ly through emo­tions and cul­tur­al stereo­types. Burn­ing Ground orig­i­nal sound­track was com­posed by Natálie Pleváková.

Res­i­den­cy Unlim­it­ed is one of the 2024 Gov­er­nors Island Arts Orga­ni­za­tions in Res­i­dence.