Description:
Author – ESCAPE Program ( Valeriy Ayzenberg, Anton Litvin, Liza Morozova)
Video performance.
Three artists in red suits dig a triangular pit. They think they are doing necessary work. They act in coordination, not paying attention to anyone around them. This meaningless process can be interpreted both literally (as the digging of a grave or a search for a treasure) and figuratively (as soul-searching, self-reflection, escapism, or detachment). Since the soundtrack for the video imagery is the hum of attendees at a gallery opening, marked by the distinct voices of well-known critics, we could say this work is about aspects of creating a work of art.
The goal of the “diggers” is blurry, but we can speak of a process of endless “depth/deepening.” There is a moment of the absurd that, one way or another, is present in almost every work of the Program, absurd brought to its limit. The strange form of the object, the persistence of the diggers, and the sense of futility — these are the three conceptual components of the project.
One could suppose that the futility of the diggers manifests itself not only outwardly, but also in the depths of their consciousness. They are obsessed with an idée fixe, and they are trying to prove an absurd message: As we know, the Earth is a sphere. The corners of a triangle on a plane are sharp, but on a sphere they are dull. If a sphere is opened on a plane, then there comes an intermediary moment when the corners of its triangle are neither dull nor sharp. But in conditions of isolated form this can only be a square. The simple process of digging a deep hole proves that a triangle with right angles cannot exist either on the surface of the sphere nor at any distance from its center. In other words, under no conditions can a triangle become a square.
(Valeriy Ayzenberg)