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Somewhere close to the rainbow is made out of sequence extracts from three sessions of conversations I had with a
young couple who has recently immigrated to a small town in the South of England. She is from Serbia, while he is
originating from Hungary. The video shows the couple sitting on their living-room sofa while talking about their ideas,
perceptions and personal problems in relation to the place they live at the moment. Their range of subjects develops
through continuity and by association, touching issues from their motivation to move in the current place, to their
relationship with local people, their idea of home and past, to discussing the problematic of being immigrant, and as well
their expectations in relation to an ideal place to live. Any visual reference to the surrounding context is excluded,
focusing the viewer exclusively to the protagonists and their narration and shifting dynamics of their psychological reaction
to their stories and in relation to their shared experience.
As the video progresses the ‘mood’ of the protagonists shifts. Forgetting the presence of the camera, their ideas gradually
transform from what was initially positive and safe, descriptive-like series of statements to more introspective and critically
coloured statements, at moments resulting even somewhat aggressive, provocative and ‘politically incorrect’.
Somewhere close to the rainbow explores the problematic of individual perception and cultural integration inside the
Western society and within an immigrant reality, focusing in particular on the geo-historical context of England on one hand
and Eastern Europe on the other, in light of the recent shifts on the political and social scene. The audience is invited to
relate themselves to the protagonists’ narrations and initiated topics by offering symbolically a sofa that mirrors the projection
scene as a place of viewing. In this sense,
Somewhere close to the rainbow questions the possibility and struggle to formulate and communicate personal experience
related to a certain reality, especially in relation to the viewer’s own personal experience and ideas. Whether it can potentially
overcome or it always remains in the realm of clichés and preconcepted
ideas, once it is communicated through the form of individual narrations.
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Somewhere close to the rainbow
2010
view of the installation
video proiection, sofa, painting
looped
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