INTERREGNUM: Adrian Paci

Curated by Abhijan Toto

 

Interregnum is a special solo project by the Albanian artist and filmmaker Adrian Paci, featuring the single-channel video work of the same name. Interregnum, meaning a time between regimes, where the old is mourned, and the new is yet to emerge, speaks to periods of uncertainty left after the passing of popular, yet oppressive leaders. Paci weaves together footage of public mourning from news broadcasts and from state archives in his native Albania, China, Serbia, Russia and other countries – in each instance the men being mourned are the brutal dictators of each state: Hoxha, Mao, Stalin. Paci invites us to examine the moment where the world’s attention turns to these countries, at the collective intake of breath when change seems possible.

 

Born out of Paci’s engagement with Albania’s recent violent history, and his own experience of exile following the Pyramid Crisis of 1997, the film explores the relationship of scales: of the micro and the macro, of individuals that cast large shadows, and collectives whose shadows vanish. The figure of the mourned ruler is conspicuously missing in the film, as the camera zooms, peering at faces of the mourning citizens, and zooms out to follow the long snaking queues their bodies form as they march single-file towards the object of grief. Paci brings to question who, or indeed what, is being mourned in these moments, and how nation or a public is suddenly produced around an apparent loss. The film thus invites us to think about moments of public mourning in history the viewers has experienced, and the interludes, and possibilities they produced.

 

Courtesy of the artist, kaufmann repetto, Milano / New York, and Peter Kilchmann, Zurich. This exhibition is produced in association with Protocinema, Istanbul. With special thanks to Mari Spirito.