In Fact was conceived and created specifically for Udoli, a performative installation at Triumph Gallery in Moscow. 

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In Fact is a three-hour-long selfie, a mediated meditation on mediated discourse. It continues the combined research into cognitive linguistics and the possibility of post-internet meditation. It was triggered by an essay by Martin Hatton called ‘Looping the Loop’ that was published in Art Monthly in May 2017. There Hatton proposes an extended understanding of a loop and discusses the kind of looping that is inherent in static images. 

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Excerpts from press release:

 

"The artist records an image of the phrase ‘на самом деле’ displayed on a computer screen with her smartphone for three hours. The often-used Russian expression ‘на самом деле’ can be roughly translated as ‘In fact’. It is one of the most common of the so-called ‘parasite’ phrases that people inadvertently use in their everyday speech. Although most such words do not add much to the meaning of what is being said, they nonetheless serve to frame it in a particular way. 

 

The seemingly static image of the phrase ‘in fact’ is a looping one-second video of the screenshot of these words. The duality of the video loop and the stillness of the image is layered with a constantly shifting focus that oscillates between the letters, pixels, dust on the screen and the artist's own reflection. Thus, the screen is captured as a digital interface, a physical surface and a mirror. This meditative process erodes the inelastic function of the phrase ‘in fact’ as an instrument for fixing the meaning and calls into question the relationship and the boundary between what is still and what is mobile."

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About Udoli:

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"Udoli is a collective project, a multi-level ecosystem created by Hanna Zubkova in collaboration with artists, curators, performers and theorists from Minsk, Moscow, Paris, London and New York. The participants worked on the project from a distance, relying on text descriptions of each other’s works and of the gallery space. 

 

The ideas of space, topology and infinite transition from one continuum to another set the configuration of Udoli, which in Old Slavic is synonymous with ‘valleys’ or ‘a life journey’ and has existential connotations of overcoming hardship. The idea of a loop, of a structure with no beginning and no end, where only motion and relations between points exist, is the project’s formal structure as well as the metaphor that inspired the participants to develop their works specifically for Udoli."

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