What’s been abandoned, as if unneeded for the humans, has meaning and use in nature – for the animals and specifically for a family of badgers that have accepted the location as their natural habitat. The cameras were fixed for months capturing stuff that humans define as permanent, tranquil, even idyllic – the change of seasons, growth and vegetation, blossoming and repose. At the same time the lenses capture all sorts of daily or nightly, ordinary yet diverse activities of insects and birds, of wild animals, and all the complex interwoven relations between species and specie individuals.

Compositionally Radostin Sedevchev’s “Present Absence” is a video installation. It aims to hold attention until one has merged with the view and the immersive effect of “loosing” oneself in the long neglected everyday life of nature is achieved. The basis of the work is the evermore popular notion of “slow time”, which we need to better reflect and experience, to make us fit for avoiding mistakes, unwelcomed intervention and aggression.

The artist does not claim to be an eco-activist with this work. However, these days the issues of ecology seem to have become the greatest concern of humanity. “Present Absence” comes across as an ecological appeal for respect and contact.

Radostin Sedevchev demonstrates once again his belonging to that wonderful artistic specie whose work is based on research; artists who are able to transform the research process into an art work. He has a special sensibility to time in its various manifestations – the measured time of history, as well as the very substance of time “in action”. He is already known as the “restorer” of human memories and of the lived-yet-forgotten past. Now the artist is urging the audience to witness for at least an instant the naturalness of time passing, and thus to partake in its process. The popular quote from John Archibald Wheeler who authored the definition for “black hole”, says: “No phenomenon is a physical phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.” That is valid for art too.

Curator: Iara Boubnova

Two-channel video installation, dimensions variable