THE DIVORCE
multi screen video installation
26:06 min. (English - French)
Editing: Raina Teneva
Camera: Tillman Rodiger
Music and sound: Ivo Paunov
Voice: RaJa ElMad
The project was supported by the Schloss Solitude Academy in Stuttgart
- Statement-
The Divorce is dedicated to the act of separating our society from the conception of absolute time; a manifesto to communicate the possibility of rethinking time, through our perceptions.
More then before, it’s clear that the true nature of time is not what it appears to us in our ordinary experience. Even if we are used to considering it as a flow of seconds/minutes /hours towards a single evolutionary direction, this is not the final definition for modern physics.
Time is a phenomenon that must be evaluated beyond any directional concept.
Time, both in the intuitive experience of ancient populations, and in the mathematical representation of modern researchers, seems to coincide in the vision of a sort of immense and infinite time span, with neither beginning or end. A dimension perfectly integrated and related to space, as shown by the cosmological model of the “chronotope”, suggested by Einstein in order to explain the phenomena of the universe in the perspective of quantum physics.
The perceptions of time are innumerable and each one of us has the choice to choose the best for himself. An act of individual freedom, because from this choice a new path could truly open up for the human being; the act of conceiving time no longer as an "absolute element" but as a perception - therefore individual and changeable - is in fact a concept closely linked to the main and most urgent unresolved questions of our era – like and not only - the search for a sustainable lifestyle, the equal relationship with Nature, the criticism of work and the society of abundance.
It might seem trivial that a simple change in the conception of time can truly revolutionize an entire planetary system. But I believe that I am not alone in considering it possible.
(..) Can we say goodbye to watches and to our traditional notions of time - its linearity, irreversibility and totality? Can we forget the ticking of the clock on the wall or the one inside us? And instead of perceiving time as an abstract substance, as a personal feeling and a fantastic journey without a predetermined direction?
In her film "Divorce", Valentina Sciarra deals with these issues and the idea of rethinking time. It is a kind of manifesto of individual time.
The film consists of 11 parts, presenting various concepts and hypotheses that Shara analyzes in her search for a definition of time. The film meets our well-known postulates of time - duration, instantaneity, irreversibility, old age, past, present, future, dream and reality. In its search, Shara offers us an unusual journey through time and space - it takes us to nature, along the stone river Vitosha and in the depths of the sea, in the frozen moments of forest fire, meeting adults and children, ordinary people, physicists and dreamy images of Italian cinema.
"Divorce" will have its premiere at the Goethe Institute in the form of a video installation, which will open on February 3 (..)
Premiera Goethe-Institut Bulgaria, Stefka Tsaneva, curator
February 2022
