2005 689. PRECISELY

Exhibition: “The miracle-worker was tall…”
The Russian State Museum
The Ludwig’s Museum in The Russian State Museum
Curators: Irina Karasik, Mikhail Karasik
December-January 2005-2006

Project: Video installation “689 precisely”


“From January, 24, 1928 to December, 13, 1929 are 689 days precisely”.

Harms.
Extract from a notebook.1928.



“And here I am looking out of the window and see
The street is ending there, and here starts the field,
And over there on the river-bank is a tree.”

November, 1931



“I have suddenly swung open
I’m a hole in the wall of houses
Everything in the world has obeyed to me
I am the fortochka of high-pitched minds.
That’s all.”

March, 15 1931



“How strange it would be should two events happen simultaneously”
from a poem “Everything happens in the end…”
 

January, 13, 1930



Description:
A table and a chair. On and under the table, in the corner of the “room” there are monitors. On the monitors we can see different face profiles taken in the close-up.
They are characters of Harms’ works. The faces are deforming, the speed of the video changes, part of the picture disappears. The faces constantly repeat the same phrase: “Where is the money? Where is the money? In the chest. In the chest.” This is a phrase from the Harms’ letter to Claudia Vassilievna Pugacheva from February, 10 1934:
“…Dear Claudia Vassilievna, I see you often in my dreams. You are running around the room with a silver bell in hand and keep asking: “Where is the money? Where is the money?” And, smoking my pipe, I answer you:” In the chest. In the chest.”

On the wall by the table, a video is projected, imitating a window. This video shows everything that is connected in the Harms’ poems with the flight, nature, speed and movement.

In the name of the installation I use Harms’ method of connecting numbers in the logic of absurd.