39/ Soft Power

2016
By Elena Artemenko
Duration: 10:09 min.
Recommended by Alena Kurmasheva

How does this work investigate “hope?”
”Encountering and contrasting “weapons” and “subordinate”, Elena Artemenko shows the way our perception can change our view of actions, relations with society and with each other. For each action, it’s not the weapon that is responsible, but the force that drives it. And this force is the only thing that is able to choose what the next action will be.” —Alena Kurmasheva

About the work:
Video is a ritual visualized a metaphor “to press on the trigger by others hands,” where a plasticity of two types of movements encounter - soft gestures of “authority” and precise but ingratiating gestures of subordinate. The props in video (weapons, flag and hand) are made of silicon - material that is similar to human flesh by its tactile properties. The mechanical sound, made by an Alto, and the choreographed and preconceived cyclical actions of the characters resemble creepy parade of force (which gradually turns into a chaos), and blank shot, that stucked in the throat of commander, suddenly heard in our minds.