I Chose To Get Involved

Mara Palena, I Chose To Get Involved, Oikeiôsis, analogue and digital photographs, videos, colours, black and white, sounds, 06:52:00, Courtesy Twenty14, 2020

The notion of memory is only one of the motives that pushed Mara Palena to start a long process - potentially infinite - titled of "Oikeiôsis". An ancient Greek word, used to indicate self-realization through the knowledge of the inner self. Using analog archival pictures, produced from the artist's childhood up until today, the process is a continuous image alteration that seems to be regulated by a state of consciousness that is at times fragile and melancholy, sometimes romantic, sometimes sharp - almost violent - never graspable. Alterations similar to a sound frequency, which regulate the tone of our perception of reality and its aesthetic transposition; universal frequencies that vibrate in the presence of a memory, which permeates every body. Passing through the crowd of a rave, where human profiles can hardly be recognized, the adudience find himself in a large cardiac apparatus, which pulsates through the images and sounds of a diary. A memory that not belong to the viewer, but seems warmly familiar. Words by Matilde Scaramellini Sound design by Donato Panaccio.