Output details

A Crack in the Light

Solzhenitsyn’s bread accompanied him across geographical and political borders. In the installation it appears as a 3D laser-scan point-cloud, a precise recording of its surface, projected onto black curtains, which is explored like a planetary surface then entered so that it becomes an interior space - a cave or cell. In another video projection, actor Alexey Kolubkov repeatedly acts out a scene from the Russian TV adaptation (2006) of Solzhenitsyn’s novel 'In the First Circle'. The scene is based on Solzhenitsyn’s experience in a special prison in Moscow, where he was forced to work on secret vocoder research under the direct orders of Stalin. The scene forms a precise analysis of Russian speech sounds, painstakingly interpreted from lines recorded on a paper ‘voiceprint’ which will later be used by the KGB to identify suspects from wiretap recordings. Excerpts from the novel are spoken by Natalya Solzhenitsyn and Alexey Kolubkov, delivered through freestanding speakers, and translated in the form of subtitles projected onto a stretch of Molton-covered wall between the existing curtains. In entering the space the viewer passes through a wooden corridor construction and is unwittingly bathed in the yellow light of standard contemporary Norwegian prison lights, borrowed from Bergen prison. Through this interweaving of historical, fictional and actual elements, the piece triangulates a listening position and reflects on the complex mirroring and collapse between different levels of information.