Szuper Gallery

Susanne Clausen & Pawlo Kerestey


Work/Arbeit/Rabota, 2007

Video installation (video 15 mins, HD DVD , black curtains, carpet, mirrors, fire, t-shirt) and live performance (3/02/07) at Artists’ Studio Knightsbridge, London

The situation

A large empty apartment in London, Knightsbridge, generously donated by a benefactor, a 1-year project project by Shezad Dawood. www.artistsstudio.org

The work

Szuper Gallery have divided the lower space into a dark mirrored studio/living space and the upper space into a light gallery. A group of actors are filmed performing in the Artists’ Studio apartment in a specifically designed set. The video evolves as the actors move through and inhabit the plush Knightsbridge location. They are rehearsing an interview, focusing on Szuper Gallery’s history as a commercial gallery and its alleged relations to the Post-Soviet Mafia, the context of the space and their own conditions of working precariously.

The video performance deconstructs the process of performing an act; concentrating on entrances, rehearsals, documentation, the set, the mechanics of the space, repetition and looping, re-enactment, awkwardness and delay. With an emphasis on notions of time and how artistic practice and experience is constructed.