Adulthood video installation

Adulthood
6:21 min
HD video installation; sofa chair

"One of the most significant memories of my childhood was that grasp in my head claiming that an adult is someone who is undeniably righteous, confident and trustful. It was undoubtable - my first axiom. The strangness of the majority of the relationships, friendships, acquaintanceships and other kinds of phenomenon that I saw in the Adulthood as a child deeply interested me. I was an observer that was the subject of my parents’ and their friends conversations. Which is completely understandable: long time - no see friends usually mention the speed of the time flow and look at their children as a living proof of the fact. Despite some of the characteristics of the “ran-into-at-the-supermarket” meetings, there are some very distinct psychological issues and codes of being an adult in the social universe. That includes the distance people start creating between each other in order to save their vulnerable egos from being exposed. I started seeing the time of the Adulthood mostly as the time of a want to seem as thriving in success which is run by the anxiety to seem like a failure. It became both ridiculous and despairing, but mostly absurd. Even though I’m still only slowly detaching from my childhood, the further I go, the more amorphous the world of adulthood seems to me. It is a world full of unexplainable and inappropriate behaviour, vicious human failure cycles of “saints” and “heroes” trying to excuse themselves and their actions. In the end, the definition of an “adult” started slowly dissolving - the majority of those people became to seem to me as the fragile children of their own egos surrounded in a world of awkwardness and misunderstandings. My first axiom became a myth and then, an anecdote."

The artwork takes a closer look into themes such as isolation, abandonment, and rejection. The distance that people create between each other becomes an inevitable consequence of life as everyone loses their inner freedom and trust. The heavy weight of our responsibilities, and the fear of failure lie on one’s shoulders. People start losing their confidence and become more and more self-conscious. Filmed in a very rough-cut manner, Adulthood explores the amorphous world of entering adulthood. The characters in the video never meet, leaving the viewer to question who is participating in the exchange. Is it a conversation? Between who? Between a careless listener and the talkative former friend? Or is it a dialogue between egos? A monologue? How far can a person go to convince others or oneself something about themselves that may not exist? The artwork consist of three main objects: a video, a brown leather armchair, and a projector. The viewer is let to sit down in an ordinary brown leather armchair, and the video starts.

2018