JESTES TAM - ARE YOU THERE

2015 - Video installation

 

 

JESTES TAM / ARE YOU THERE was created during a three-month residency at Łaznia, Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdansk. The artwork developed through participatory research on how the image of the absent family member – who migrated for economic reasons – is transformed through the use of digital communication media, more specific Skype.

The artists focused on how an intimate contact can be made through this contemporary communication medium and how the digital enables or transforms our sense of presence of the other.

In order to put this contemporary form of long distance communication in a broader historical context, the artists researched written long distance communication between parents and their children from the first wave of migration shortly after 1989.

Both the contemporary digital communication and the letters common people used to write to each other are rarely preserved or picked up as valuable documents. In JESTES TAM both of these vanishing forms of communicative culture are given a place through dialogue and comparison.

 

Weblink:
Vimeo preview (pw: There)

Collaboration:
Marius Packbier, Valentin Fayet, Adam Asnan

Support:
CIRCA, Haven Gent, City of Gdansk, LAZNIA, ARGOS, Pools Instituut Brussel

Exhibitions:
11/2017 Interference – TRIPOT solo exhibition 2025, Hamburg (DE)
09/2016 Laznia, Center for Contemporary Art, Gdansk (PL)
10/2016 2025 Kunst & Kultur, Hamburg (DE)