Weather, geology, shamans, aliens, kitsch, popular culture… All-too-human, the woman… The ‘precarious line between encyclopaedic understanding of the world’ and the arbitrariness of choices and passions made the library a fascinating collection to analyse, a modern ‘cabinet of curiosities’. We explored the collection and the ‘daring jumps’ between topics, the juxtapositions between serious and humorous, scientific and speculative. The library as a time capsule, representative of its time and location.
But what happens when rigid categories are shaken? When the way we are used to ‘read’ the world is questioned? The feeling of chaos, disorientation, discomfort, fear, often comes from shaking fixed perceptions. Disorientation is also one of the most widely used methods in horror films to create suspense. ‘(Dis)orient’ is a horror visual essay based on a vast variety of visual materials collected from the library, exploring how context, order and categories construct meaning and how systems of organisation dictate narratives.
Text: Daria Kiselva & Amir Avraham
November 2021