FOOD Coa & Sordes, Rabenfrühstück (Raven’s Breakfast), 200 5in, :3, silent – FESCH.TV

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

In the garden a breakfast table has been laid out. On the plate there is a fried egg, a slice of bread, a piece of hard cheese, and next to it is a jug of beer. The artist duo has set this place for a very special guest: a raven they spotted in the garden. The fixed camera is ready. An hour is recorded, but the raven’s visit lasts only a few seconds. Only by prolonging into a slow motion time loop is the bird’s hasty visit translated into human dimensions of time and perception. The raven tastes something, first one, then another bit of food and dips the piece of cheese into the beer in ‘raven fashion’. Finally, he flies off with the white bread.
Only when the film is evaluated does the misshapen left claw make it clear: it must have been the same animal with which an encounter took place years ago. The duo had once nurtured a young raven with a sick foot until it became fully fledged. Copa & Sordes have also captured the scene of realization in their video as a painting on canvas.
The video “Raven’s Breakfast” belongs to the “Video tableaux” works of the artist duo. With these they place themselves within the developmental art history of genre and still-life painting of the 17th and 18th centuries whilst further pursuing this with the cinematic medium and involving contemporary motifs and figures. A further tradition is taken up, namely that of the Tableaux Vivantes from the 19th century, which were arrangements with people who re-enacted well-known pictures for pure entertainment, on the occasion of festivities.
For their “Video tableaux” Copa & Sordes do not use the conventional narrative structure of film. They rely on a fixed camera setting and the temporal dimension. Within the picture frame, life unfolds through movement which creates change, thus constructing the picture. Most of these works have a longer duration, often even an hour. They resemble observation stations. The artists write on their website: “There is a first look – a second look – and a slow look.” With their media genre pictures or digital still lives, Copa & Sordes process the vanitas symbolism of the baroque, transferring this into our own times. The innate aesthetics of the medium of film coalesce with this symbolism, as a visible procedure of transformation.
Andrea Domesle, translated by Christopher Haley Simpson