The work was open for viewing only during the Summer Screenings 2024.
THE SUN, THE MAST OR GRAVITY by Mario Mu Germany, Croatia (2022)
Expo 58 – the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair – provided a respite from warfare with its celebration of new national authorship, presenting different dialects of the language of modern architecture. Vjenceslav Richter teamed up with architect Emil Weber to design the Yugoslav pavilion, which was initially conceived as a floating structure attached to a 70-meter pole by steel cables, but this idea was rejected due to huge costs and dubious statics. According to an assessment by construction engineer Zvonko Springer, in order to realize a structure with a “floating foundation,” you would need steel cables with a 90-100mm diameter, which were not available on the Yugoslav market at the time. We learn from his diary that similar cables – trophies of questionable quality – were found in the Danube below a bridge that had been destroyed in World War Two.
Corroded steel cables emerge from the riverbed and become a branching, nervous system-like structure that powers the image and the architecture of Mario Mu’s new video work. We follow the cyclical nature of destruction and construction through the transformation of a structure that encompasses different architectural typologies, from the never-realized mast of the Yugoslav pavilion to the ruins of the National Museum of Aleppo destroyed in the Syrian war in 2016. In the video, the built environment and the residues of destruction intertwine, and space articulates the changing social dynamics. This work is a continuation of the artist’s ongoing project entitled “Sites of Encounter” which explores alternative perceptions of spatiality through the morphology of digital spaces. Inspired by the language of modernism, the possibilities of arranging and framing basic elements into new constellations, and the permutations of images and their shadows, Mario Mu translates Vjenceslav Richter’s visual language to the cinematic space of video games.
Bio
Mario Mu is an artist and filmmaker living between Croatia and Germany. After graduating from University of Arts in Berlin in 2017., Mario has been working on a series of events as an author and collaborator internationally, including Singapore Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, WHW Collective, V2 Institute for Unstable Media, MGLC Ljubljana, MAAT Lisbon, Research Center for Proxy Politics and The School of Machines.
Work by Mario Mu
Music: Strahinja Arbutina
Producers: Vesna Mestric, Lovro Japundzic
Pebbles Underground is focused on showcasing and promoting experimental, avant-garde, underground, and no-to-low budget projects by artist-humans from all over the world. Absurd, uncanny, witty, humorous, slow-video – all are welcomed, and loved.
Pebbles Underground is an independent project not funded by any government or corporation, and we intend to keep it that way. Main source of funding is personal donations from humans organizing the project, who are artists themselves, and the main drive of the project is formed by the energy and involvement of the organizers, and the public.
