IA&A at Hillyer | Maria Korporal

Songlines

The video above is a 3-minutes trailer*teaser.
The whole video is more than 13 minutes long and has been shown in the events 17 Days Videos Series (USA), Lines in Between the Maze (Berlin) and in loop at the exhibition “Under Another Roof” in IA&A at Hillyer, Washington DC.

NEW • September 10-27, 2020: screening in loop at the exhibition Wild & Connected Plus, BBK-Kunstforum Düsseldorf.

A special 5-minutes version has been shown in FIVAC Festival Internacional de Videoarte de Camagüey, in the Screening der Medienwerkstatt 2018 in Berlin and in Kino Central, Berlin, on 26th June 2019 under the title LIFE-X-CHANGE.

NEW • October 15-25, 2020: Madatac IX, International Official Section, Cine Estudio del Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid.

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description:
This is a new, independent and amplified version of the video “Walkabout”, which was part of the installation “Under the Same Roof”. Click here to see the work.

In the culture of Aboriginal Australians, the long ritual walks in the desert of individuals who undertake the Walkabout* (as mentioned by Bruce Chatwin in “The Songlines”, 1987) play an essential role in allowing contact and exchanges of resources (both material and spiritual) between populations separated by enormous distances. In my work, I let myself be guided by the idea of the Aboriginal Australians to see a “territory” not as a determined piece of land, but as a dynamic network of paths, tracks, and songs – so well described by Chatwin.
In my video, this network is represented by a web of ropes on an underlying, slowly moving landscape. In four central spaces between the cords, areas of sand take form, in which different things happen: one hand digs a bone from the sand while another hand buries leaf, one pulls out a folded piece of paper, opens it and reads the word “life” which turns into other languages, one hand throws a stone from one panel to the other, new life is born out of things—in short, it is a ritual game of transformation and exchange of objects and words between the different areas. After a while everything is flooded by the sea water. The rope structure loses its geometrical form and the sand dissolves. When the flood retreats, a new network is generated and other scenes arise out of the sand.

* “Walkabout” has come to be referred to as “temporary mobility” because its original name has sometimes been used as an inappropriate term in Australian culture, ignoring its spiritual significance.

title: Songlines
technique: Experimental video and animation
length: 13’41” in loop
year: 2018
sound: kangaroovindaloo (earth) and Maria Korporal (water)
concept, camera, animation, effects and montage: Maria Korporal

Under Another Roof

Exhibition in IA&A at Hillyer
9 Hillyer Court
Washington DC

August 3 – September 2, 2018

Marina Buening, Kristien De Neve, Anita Guerra, Maria Korporal

Under Another Roof is an exhibit based on the site-specific installation, Under the Same Roof designed for the Gallery Sala 1 in Rome (Italy) and realized in May 2018. Four artists born in four different countries choose to focus on the desire and on the need for a harmonious coexistence, while dealing with the difficulties and the fears of this endeavor.

In Rome, they construct a common building, octagonal in shape, with four entrances and four walls, as a strong visual metaphor of cohabitation. Each of the four vertical walls show how each artist connects earth with heaven through a personal visual vocabulary and message. As human beings we all live in a standing position as particular intersections of two fundamentally shared planes.

In Washington D.C., the work of the four artists once again shares the same sky and the same ground while the four walls are differentiated by the traces of each individual’s visual language. Another “roof”, the roof of the IA§A Hillyer Gallery, generously hosts their proposal.
On each of the four walls the observer can now find some traces of the former site-specific installation, re-elaborated for IA§A in a more synthetic version, without any pre- meditated or direct interactions between them. The relationship between the different artistic proposals is left to the sensibility of the observer.

Nevertheless, one hint of correlation between the messages of the artists can be given:
in each of the artist’s works there is a clear invitation towards self-investigation as a condition for living more harmoniously with other people and with our environment in its broadest sense.

Marina Buening presents images of branches entitled, “In the Wild”. She encourages people to get in touch with the vulnerability of nature. For her, self- investigation has to do with healing the profound relationship between man and nature, necessary for a harmonious existence. In Kristien De Neve’s work on mirrors there is an explicit request to go beyond superficial self-images, personal masks that limit our capacity to relate to people in a new and profound way. In Anita Guerra’s work a floating identity is indicated, which can only be rooted in our physical bodies (“Corpus-Domus”). The body, viewed as that constant home which follows us around wherever we live, thus becomes an indicator or our own limits/limitations and resources. Only by knowing ourselves can we begin to know each other. In Maria Korporal’s work – “Songlines”, a video inspired by the ritual Walkabout* of Aboriginal Australians – self-knowledge emerges through a long and intriguing journey made up of many exchanges, creating networks between people that transcend territorial and personal limits.

click here to see Maria Korporal’s work for this exhibition, “Songlines”