1999 30’
Witnessing the primordial battle of fire and water… it is a vision of a world becoming in front of our eyes, a meditation on the energies, which have shaped and continue to shape our planet.
The battle of lava and the ocean lasts for days and nights on end - grandiose fire-works that breathe in a mysterious pulse and speak of another dimension. From dawn to dusk and through the night, the colours and hues are changing, the elements creating a hypnotic symphony of eons past.
The film footage for the installation was shot on the island of Hawaii.
Time Horizon is an original image and sound orchestration concept. It creates the illusion of phenomena flowing, in time and space, across the horizon of screens.
Ocean Lava - Time Horizon represented Slovenia at the 48th Venice Biennial 1999. In a review of the Biennial (The Triumph of Andrej Zdravič, Wiener Journal) Friedrich Danielis wrote:
„…Ocean Lava (1999), a thirty-minute film on ten screens arranged in an arc, shows nothing less than the birth of the world. Glaring matter splashes, quivers, sizzles, squirts and trembles through the wildly seething waters; red, yellow, white hot lava forces its way through enraged seas, swaying in mighty waves from screen to screen in overwhelmingly magnificent images of the powerful originator - nature. With his eyes the visitor absorbs in disbelief these colour undulations, bewildered by something that has never happened, something unheard of. He is filled with gratitude towards the artist who, without any vanity yet in complete possession of high technical abilities, makes manifest a fundamental truth before which the overzealous and belaboured contemporariness of numerous exhibited works (at the 48th Venice Biennial) completely fades away - that nature tells us what it shows us. What Zdravič shows us is wonderfully equal to nature. He is a giant.“
Ocean Lava was also shown at WasserKraft festival, Gmünd, Austria (2008) and at Kunst und Ausstellungshalle - Earth Congress, Bonn (2001).
In 2001, Andrej Zdravič made his 24-minute film Origin, a companion work to the Ocean Lava installation.
Origin was shown, among others, at:
Bienal del Fin del Mundo, Ushuaia, Argentina - one-screen installation /4 weeks (2009)
48°C Public Art Ecology Festival in New Delhi - part of the author’s installation Earth-Consciousness-Revival, a simultaneous open-air projection of three films /10 days (2008)
The Films of Andrej Zdravič - Retrospective, Anthology Film Archives, New York (2008)
Pyrotechnies: Pour une histoire des arts incendiaires - Auditorium du Louvre, Paris (2003)
A Tribute to Robert Flaherty - National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (2002)
e-Magineering series, College of Art and Communication, Malmö (2001)
Artecinema - 5th International Festival of Films on Art, Naples (2001)
Kino Integral - Slovenian Cinematheque, Ljubljana (2001)
What Next? - Fabrica film series, Centro Culturale Candiani, Mestre, Italy (2001)
Best of Flaherty 2001 - Museum of Modern Art, New York (2001)
47th Flaherty Film Seminar, Long Island University, New York (2001)
4th Festival of Slovene Film, Portorož, Slovenia (2001)
Ocean Lava-Time Horizon
1999, 30’ loop, 8-channel Video Installation, Sound, Software, Laserdisc
Camera, Editing, Sound Recording & Composition, Installation Concept & Programming: Andrej Zdravič
Volcano Sound Recording and Expedition Assistant: Naomi Sodetani
Guide at the eruption site: John Kjargaard
Produced by ANTARA /e-mail: antara@antara.si
Ocean Lava-Time Horizon©1999 Andrej Zdravič. All Rights Reserved.
