TRANSACTION at ‘Strangers and Paradise’, Witte de With / Rotterdam
interviews, session, film collection (3 DVD 30 min.), footnotes archive, slide projection / Witte de With / Rotterdam / 2000
TRANSACTION unfolds as an interface of a large box that installs in the 3 room space at the second floor of the Witte de With, Rotterdam. The box as interface is chosen to reveal a meta level of mechanisms that institution of psychiatry used to apply to pack the people during the Soviet past. TRANSACTION at Witte de With starts to navigate the institutional space giving room to the archive of female voice brought by Lithuanian intellectuals broadcasted from two monitors and printed text pages available through the cardboard architecture of the boxes. Audience is invited to collect their own story from the archive of personal notes and references printed on pages provided from the vertical boxes that substitute regular shelves and tables. Two synchronized slide projections in the other room provide a series of the memory like snapshots taken from the sequences of documentary and fiction film that features characters from those key moments women recall to support their narratives. The monitor that projects samples of a key scenes is positioned besides the large projection featuring the session with psychiatrists that watch the key sequences, analyze and comment. These three sides, constructing the box, play paradigmatic role in the three way dialogue of a drama triangle.
