WELCOME TO BELLONA
04/04/20
by Valentina Zamfirescu
I was thinking how, in Samuel Delaney’s epic 1974 novel “Dhalgren,” the main subjects (and objects and settings, etc.) are sort of peripheral things and ideas even though they are the central points of the book. Bellona, the city where the book takes place, is peripheral—a quarantined Midwestern city that suffered some sort of disaster and has now been forgotten by the rest of the country and the world. “Kidd” is the main character in the book (and maybe its writer), but because he has forgotten his name and most of his past, he becomes peripheral to himself. He relies on instinct to operate in the world. All that he has learned and forgotten still operates in the background and still makes him who he is. Everything is informed by instinct. Instinct operates peripherally, hidden in our daily navigation of the world, as background algorithms predicting what we’re going to do. Instincts are learned behaviors over a lifetime of experiences, but they come out as mere feelings, feelings which inform our drives. Who’s driving?
Unity 3d build “stretches”
In my work, when I’m faced with something as front-facing as VR I turn to the periphery for a sort of guidance. Or I see the peripheral as the place with the most potential. When we walk through the world, we recognize what’s in front of us, take it in and analyze it. We rarely do that with the peripheral things we absorb—even though they inform the way we move through space just as much as the more conspicuous frontal cues.
For the work I will present in the black box that is Zoom, I plucked audio fragments from “Dhalgren” being read aloud, thinking of them as peripheral to a video of me worldbuilding in the 3D editing software Unity. The disembodied audio complements a screen recording of the disembodied process of navigating interfaces, digitally materialized volumetric spaces, lighting and atmospheric effects.
Cover of Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany. First published by Bantam Books, New York NY, 1975.
The way that Dhalgren is written is fragmented and disorienting; the way time works in the book—as it seems to stretch, loop, compress—is maybe similar to how we’re all feeling currently. Delaney, whose 78th birthday was April 1, knew half a century ago how to describe what we’re feeling today:
“I have to keep mentioning this timelessness because the phenomenon irritates the part of the mind over which time’s passage registers, so that instants, seconds, minutes are painfully real; but hours—much less days and weeks—are left-over noises from a dead tongue.”
(This quotation itself, as it goes, is a footnote in the periphery of the book).
Our instincts (lived experiences) haven’t prepared us for this. Time feels off.
This is Cher. “Well—when somebody uses strange words to you that you just don’t understand, you have to listen for the feeling and get at the meaning that way.”
Digital image by Team Precariat x Noeeko Design
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
OPENING THIS SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 2020 - 6:00-9:00pm
ENTER THROUGH THE LOBBY: twitch.tv/teamprecariat
OR ENTER THE INSTALLATION/ARTIST RECEPTION DIRECTLY: https://zoom.us/j/850018886?pwd=OGs0UXh2QVpTU1Q3aFBzZk01TGJtUT09
Team Precariat
with support from
The Quarantine Times/PMI is proud to present:
Welcome to Bellona by Valentina Zamfirescu
Looping video with audio
Trt: 49 m
Visitors are invited to enter and experience the looping video installation through a Zoom invitation that will be provided here and across social media shortly (download application at zoom.us). The room will have all microphones and cameras deactivated to enhance visitors’ immersion into the work. The artist will be available for questions and comments in the text chat within the Zoom meeting room. Visitors will be encouraged to view the work full screen on their desktop or laptop computers, on headphones, and room darkened for full effect.
Another portal to the installation will be hosted on twitch.tv/teamprecariat in a lobby set up with additional information on the work and a sampling of other videos by the artist. The curators will be available in the Twitch chat for additional questions and comments about the work, as well as for technical assistance getting into the Zoom installation.
Valentina Zamfirescu excavates and abstracts her own suppressed memories and traumas from a childhood in Romania during Communism’s abolishment and her family’s subsequent immigration to the United States. Valentina Zamfirescu received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA in Sculpture at Yale University, where she received the Blended Reality Grant and the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media Graduate Fellowship. She is a co-founder and co-director of 4th Ward Project Space in Chicago and has exhibited at institutions and galleries including Essex Flowers, Slow, the International Museum of Surgical Science, and ACRE Exhibitions. Her work was included in the B3 Biennial of the Moving Image in Frankfurt, Germany.
