Dmitry Barabanov
OPEN YOUR MIND
When Oksana Dubrorvskaya happened to be in Berlin in 1998, she didn’t look for the ruins of the Wall or for Brandenburg Gate to take tourist pictures. Instead, she went to the library and took videocopies of the films that she long wanted to watch again. And she did watch the films, with her camera in hand. The «25-th frame» exhibit came out as a result.
The very term «25-th frame» refers to certain psycho-physiological phenomenon of awakening unconscious impulses and of the inevitable suggestive impact on the subject’s psyche. The «25-th frame» is a fraction of visual information that is not consciously perceptible by human eye. The message slips through consciousness deep into subconscious levels, and then associative thinking starts working.
Obviously the «25-th frame» term gets an ambivalent attitude, because dichotomy of fear (of intrusion) and desire (to be hypnotized) generates the conflict. The «25-th frame effect» is actually hypnosis without a hypnotist. It might become a context for reorganizing subjective visions, despite the fact that under stimulation of trance, associative reactions are evoked indirectly and usually have individual character. Oksana Dubrovskaya addresses our wish to decode the encrypted message. Some segments are recognized, some not. Though that’s not the main thing. The point is in realization of dream, in providing the art document which could approve the fact of «magic moments» stated. Photo-impositions just point at the phantom and sandy phenomenon and the present cultural reference, that couldn’t be photographed in whole. Cultural heritage of the Western world can’t organically mix with our blood anyhow, and we should take it not as a fact but as paradox. This heritage appears fragmented as if a ghost from the other world, and dangles us. In this sense, the films taken in German library, are not only a metaphor of the slipping beauty, but also an emblem of Russian deprivation. The unquenchable languish for earthly paradise as a real place where fantasies come true, may evoke obsessive thoughts and desires.
It’s very important that the artist has chosen not the material objects, but realities of the illusory cine/video world. Deceptive luxury of the classical films reminds of a local dream about «foreign Paradise». The difference is that a tourist would bring back pictures of himself in front of the Reichstag, while Oksana brought the «25-th frame» series.
The artist has overimposed into one black-n-white frame several fragments from the films (works by Leni Riefenstahl, ballet movies and «Farinelli Castrato»), thus giving these frames the status of concentrated retroimages. Such a conjunction in one frame could be organic only if there’s some amalgamating principle, which is here a conventionality of black-n-white photo. Stills from Leni Riefenstahl’s films point out some weightlessness of their own existence. Her films exist and at the same time they do not. Banned in Germany, but soon to be rehabilitated. Being a cult in Russia, they’re hard to find.
Tracking down the film-video-photo-video link we find that video is a very important element. Because to fix the photoimage of a fragmented cinema reality and make the art-ifact one needs to use pause, rewind and still adjust functions. And then photographs, being edited into a videoclip and shown in certain sequence, close the ring and finish the concept of Oksana Dubrovskaya’s project.
Referring to local cultural situation, the artist points that the cult of not-well-known or/and hard-to-find pieces (movies, exhibits, albums, magazines, music etc.), and enchantment with sacred names and titles, does inevitably generate the incorporative fantasies. So how is identification with the object possible if the system-forming links and schemes are absent? Everyone has their own answer.
«The 25-th frame» exhibit is curious first of all because it represents a materialized desire and is a symbolic expression of the reflected fantasy, exported from subconscious right into consciousness.
Happy trance!