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Bogdan Alexandrov

Pareidolia. Staged portraits (Counter-intuitive project)

By analogy with the scientific method and with symbolic references to “opus citatum est”, the project offers a model of the idea of ​​time cyclicity. A model, able to submit evidence for the possibility of experiences of an artistic image (stored in collective memory) to come as a vision through the prism of unabated citation. "Pareidolia" gathers as portrait protagonists - friends and colleagues, entering into theatrical and operetta roles. Through characteristic props - hats and helmets, and with slow shutter speed on the camera, the models as if playing a game enter into quasi-roles, giving new perspectives on the artistic present. Integrated stage movement in the compositional space of the portraits transforms them into a simultaneous performance of a post-dramatic nature.

 Gilles Deleuze defines "motion-image" as essentially related to an indirect representation of time - it presents time without giving us a specific image for it, that is, it does not represent image-time. Perceived through Deleuze's definition, the project allows experimentation with the notion for the "Exhibition-stage" with a fixed "cast", rehearsing in different times and spaces. As a result, there are multiple images-pareidolias from different by credo artistic practices - each with its own time hue in accord with the present-day veracity.

Staged portraits reveal complex and varied connections and dependencies, with deep saturation between photography and painting, and photography and theater, calming down as painting and theater. The paradox of losing the timeframe (no beginning, no middle, and no end) and replacing it with a "time glitch" making unstable the temporal unity, and provoking a time experience different from the usual one. According to Bart, "time crystallizes and transforms perception by turning delayed motion into a "form of time". It seems as if the visual object on stage keeps time within itself. The flow of time has become a "continuing present". A present capable of engaging the viewer in portrait dramaturgy, placing it in an artistic weightlessness, and moving a stream of subjective reminiscences. Directing staged portraits reminds us of the effect of a standing wave in a stationary environment. The movement of the form (in this case, the image) is "splashed" on the periphery of the picture plane, and the return wave interferes with the wave that generated it, thus touring in permanent performance of the image ... And all this in a world that aspires to transform even the image for itself into pareidolia...

Bogdan Alexandrov

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