Artists Katja Mater
Date February 10 – March 16, 2024
Venue Manifold Books
Katja Mater started talking to Staci Bu Shea right after her father Marius and just before her mother Carla died. They have guided her through the many landscapes of dying, death, loss and grief while she took notes. She considers this a collaborative film, having used some of Staci’s words.
The rhythms of the two projectors are reminiscent of clocks ticking not 60 but 1440 times per minute. Film projectors and clocks share the same mechanism from the 17th century, converting continuous motion into intermittent motion, causing a second hand to ‘tick’ and a film frame to briefly freeze instead of sliding away in front of the lens. This specific movement is a measure of intangibly perforated micro-time, just as the duration of a photographic exposure is virtually impossible for humans to register.
Katja Mater’s multiple exposures stack time and disrupt the concept of linearity, similarly to how in the experience of mourning the system of causality, in which we function on a daily basis, falls apart.
This year each at Manifold Books show will leave its trace (a kind of footnote) into the next show, building up as the year unfolds. In When Things Fall Apart by Katja Mater, such a trace will be left by the final exhibitor, Buryad-Mongolian artist Natalia Papaeva, in an act of reversing time. Additionally, a text contribution by Moosje Moti Goosen will appear throughout the year, traversing shows and events, following its own rhythm.
