COMMA 34 / 35: Marcellvs L. / Nora Schultz

The Brazilian artist Marcellvs L. creates a tangible physical staging of time and slows it down in a very particular manner. Marcellvs sets the most commonplace objects in a state of perpetual duration, and all is seemingly detached from reality. The subjects he films–whether from very far away or extremely close–cease to be subjects and become constant beats in the continuity of general existence. His approach underscores the process, event-oriented, nature of films; nothing happens in these works, which carry a radically anti-narrative structure.

Marcellvs forges on with the aesthetic of raw visual material, asserting, through the pixels and electrons that remain visible, that their status is incidental and unfinished. The only actual event, however, is the extension of time, where duration becomes the real protagonist. The physicality produced by the sound and rhythm of the films makes the videos into passages for the viewer; the films turn into spaces of transit for the confrontation of possibility.

Marcellvs choreographs two audiovisual works and one sound piece for his COMMA commission at Bloomberg SPACE. Appearing in a darkened gallery with a window open to conserve the architectural features, Marcellvs's video projection of a very closely filmed bright fishing net being wound in and film of people far, far away in the distance, carries a breaking, lighting relation to sound, which is much more palpable than the shifting relation to subject brought through sight. The sound, a mixed resonance of strings, waves, and muffled boat engines, was in fact recorded on a boat transporting a grand piano across the Venice lagoon. Two contact and two omnidirectional microphones were positioned on the sound board of the grand piano, and the sound of the lagoons is filtered by the acoustic properties of the piano.

A fluent understanding of the associative potential of material lies behind the quiet arrangement of a Nora Schultz installation. Schultz's work walks a fine line between physical interaction and conceptual lead; her sculptural installation is as much to do with the significance of function and language as the experience of discovery. Concerned with the way in which she brings objects together, the relationship she generally establishes between elements combines the three-dimensional possibility of connection with a thrill of mutual physical dependency. Together, or as one, her works create an ongoing sense of exploration, as the possibility of more and more layers of understanding is revealed.

For Bloomberg SPACE, Nora Schultz will step away from a perhaps more static relationship to material by establishing, through simple means, a structure that is able to produce more material. She aims to bluntly question the value of work through a close relation to basic materials. Taking a brick as the starting point, she will look at how it can imprint both with its three-dimensional volume and flat surface. Through establishing a sort of print works, or lo-fi factory for both brick and paper, she aims to deal with notions of overproduction by establishing a slow-paced production of information. This rather lumpen press will function as a working press throughout the show to produce material more close to its means of production than to a source of separate value. Brick by brick, A4 paper sheet by A4 sheet, the installation will stay as self-contained as any sculptural installation. Despite the idea of the constant reproduction of image or object, the manual nature of the process allowing for subtle changes in individual printing, the delicate installation will add to, and expand the original idea of the show.

COMMA 34: Marcellvs L.
COMMA 35: Nora Schultz