The exhibition As Far As I Can See by Kama Sokolnicka and Emanuel Geisser draws on the work of Jonas Mekas, the godfather of New York’s film avant-garde, whose retrospective is being held at this year’s 22nd New Horizons International Film Festival in Wrocław. The show’s title can be interpreted to mean either ‘in appearance’ or ‘as far as I can reach with my eyes’. While not an actual quote from Mekas’s films, it sounds like one, and signals the limitation of human perception, of comprehending the state of affairs at a given moment. One of the reasons why the Lithuanian-American filmmaker chose to use a 16mm Bolex camera was his attempt to capture the passing moment. Experiencing the hardships of emigration, a war refugee Mekas found solace in the process of documenting the present. He focused his attention on the immediate, on what he would simply see around him.
‘They tell me that I should be always searching but I’m only celebrating what I see. I’m searching for nothing, I’m happy,’ declares Jonas Mekas in his film Walden (Diaries, Notes, and Sketches) (1969). Integrating everyday life with the field of the creative process is a radical gesture that equates art with life. We can see a similar approach in the creative practices of Kama Sokolnicka and Emanuel Geisser. The artists’ attentiveness lies in their thoughtful selection of materials, the way they come up with artefacts, as well as their ability to draw on the ephemeral conditions of reality. The works presented in the exhibition also draw on Mekas’s film aesthetics and poetics: flickering light, dynamic editing, and combining the word with the image.
The humorous film “There is no Ithaca”, featured in the exhibition, refers to the title of a publication (1996) featuring two poem cycles by Jonas Mekas describing the idyllic, lost Semeniškės – the artist’s ‘little homeland’. It was created during a trip that the two artists have been taking together for several years, exploring the landscapes in their self-made camper van. In a state of limbo, constantly on the move, they find their temporary spaces, which they leave anyway after a short while. The video was made during the lockdown when they were stranded in ‘their own Odyssey’ by the Ionian Sea, overlooking Ithaca. The Homeric island, seen in the background behind the artist, was the place that Odysseus longed to return to. The phrase ‘Ithaca does not exist’ is not only a pragmatic farewell to the sentimental imagery of the past, it is also a synthesis of life. Loss is, after all, naturally inscribed in its course, and there is something dreamlike about memories.
Kama Sokolnicka’s work Frame by Frame (Mekas in Himalayas) deals with visions of the future and unfulfilled plans. The installation, spread across the space in the shape of a mountain chain, takes its form from Tibetan prayer flags. It was inspired by the answer that Jonas Mekas gave to Hans Urlich Obrist in an interview in 2019. Asked about his unrealized projects, he said: ‘When I am 100, I want to go to the Himalayas, to travel to Tibet. We’ll talk about it in 2023, when I come back.’ If he were still alive, he would be celebrating his 100th birthday this year. The planned expedition has remained a mere fantasy for a potential future. The Himalayas in Sokolnicka’s work materialise only as lines marked by flags. For the two artists, the exhibition is intended as a gift for Mekas’s 100th birthday.
The series of collages Nature Never Repeats by Emanuel Geisser brings to mind film frames. The works demonstrate the editing strategy frequently employed by both artists, that is, combining meaning and content in ways characteristic of the film medium. The collages, based on two different editions of a guidebook on plant care, refer to Mekas’s affection for nature; childhood landscapes that he harboured and incorporated in his films alongside recorded images of plants, parks and greenery currently surrounding him. I’m Standing in My Own Shadow, written by Geisser on a typewriter, may in turn vaguely resemble narrative interludes from Mekas’s films.
The free flow of thought, so prevalent in Mekas’s films, appears on some level in the installation Two Suns. Luminous flashes drift across the wall to animate the space around them, with their movement resembling the wanderings of the mind. The phrase All Clouds Turn to Words, seen on the surface of the mirror, evokes a state of immersion in the mindful experience of reality. I’m Trying to Remember is a declaration of an attempt to preserve a given moment and captures the nature of human memory.
The exhibition As Far As I Can See paints a landscape spanning between memories and dreams. Emanuel Geisser and Kama Sokolnicka set their narrative within this realm. Sentimental images of the past and visions of a bright future can distort the perception of the real. That is the reason why it is also essential to stay in touch with the present moment, to be mindful of the everyday, which Geisser and Sokolnicka encourage with their works.