BOREDOM IS NOT FAR FROM ECSTASY
2010Gallery Draakon, TallinnPigment prints from 6×6 negative, 60×60 cm
2018 Tartu Art Museum2 sided lightbox, 160×160 cm
The protagonist of the exhibition "Boredom is not far from ecstasy" is time as the necessary measure for experiencing boredom and ecstasy. On the photos, time takes a long time to run its course, and is more like a state, enabling to experience the sense of "being there," existing, or notice their different layers and their genesis. Beginning and end are of no importance here, but moving in ones own pace is. Another common trace with the boredom and ecstasy discussed on the exhibition is the abundance, saturation. Do we have everything sufficiently – in abundance – or does the abundance of choices fail to satisfy us, creating a so-called Baroque boredom characteristic of saturation, where we find it hard to recognise the things worthy of doing and experiencing among the abundance offered to us.Photos depicting the time of leisure and the peculiar abundance and different layers are full of allusions, regardless of their easily recognisable objects.
"There's nothing to do: boredom is not a simple matter. Boredom (of a work, text) cannot be helped with an angry shudder. Just as the ecstasy of text requires indirect construction, boredom cannot hope for any spontaneity whatsoever: there is no such thing as sincere boredom – if I, personally, am bored by a bavardage of text, then this is because I don't actually don't like what is expected from me. But if I would like it (if I had some kind of motherly appetite)? Boredom is not far from ecstasy; it is ecstasy seen from the shores of pleasure."
Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of The Text
Related articles:
The Creative Motors of Boredom. Elnara Taidre (Kunst.EE 2/2018)
Space inside sentences. Watching a column of light. Laura Brokāne (Arterritory.com, 11/01/2017)
Tiitlita. Andreas Trossek (Artishok.blogspot.com 01/2010)
Krista Mölder and the pleasure of visual text. Elnara Taidre (Kunst.EE, 1-2/2010)
