video installation

Lucia Sceranková’s Drinking Salty Water Does Not Help (2020) is a poetic video installation, connecting the fluidity and ephemerality of digital communication with actual bodily presence. Fragments of hair, hands, an eye or a face resemble separated details of a (human) being getting lost and finding new horizons in the virtual space, looking for ways to connect and disconnect in a future that is already becoming our reality, yet is largely incomprehensible. Through this work, Sceranková explores the boundaries of the digital and ‘real’ without anxiety, with a sense of curiosity and careful observation of the unknown. The works could be called moving images in the very sense of the word: they are floating excerpts of reality, almost animated photographic images, yet each of them could tell a separate story hidden behind it. Together, they create a meditative, yet somehow unsettling kind of flow – they are liquid and ungraspable, just as the kind of future we might be entering with cell phones, headphones or gadgets that act as an extension of our bodies, becoming an almost inseparable part of ourselves. Techno optimism might not be the answer to our prayers for a better world, yet it is too late for a simple return to nature (which nature could be the one to return to?). We might need to learn to navigate this planet (and beyond) with a little bit of both, and much more of what is yet to be discovered and dreamt about.

Text for the soundtrack: Jen Kratochvíl & Lucia Sceranková
Sound Mix: Max Vajt
Special thanks to Marián Grolmus, Zuzana Sceranková and Lily Hall

Lucia Sceranková (born 1985) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava and the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (Painting Studio II/Vladimír Skrepl School). She works primarily in the medium of photography or moving image, using it to manipulate reality rather than to merely capture it. She is mostly interested in photography’s ability to visually reflect reality and their possible mutual influence. She photographs handmade scenes and composed environments of monumental character as well as intimate, quiet spaces. Her work is characterized by fragile motifs and materials whose qualities may seem to change when captured by photography. The artist lives and works in Prague and London.