Room at the end of the world

Room at The End of The World is a multimedia installation and performance that uses fog with the scent of forest and nature at the center of its composition. The work navigates between notions of the sublime and the banal, depicted through tableau vivant style choreography. The work explores our relationship with nature and the environment in which we live. With the introduction of industrialization and urbanization in the early 20th century, many cities were stripped of their identity through the adoption of modernism and the international architectural style, creating homogeneous landscapes that became the backdrop of existence, with an equally monotonous rhythm – a modern life that is largely deprived of an authentic connection with nature.

With her work, Desova introduces the notion of the “corporate-sublime,” as defined by her, encompassing an imagined future – a post-anthropocene reality reminiscent of the bottom of the sea or the top of a mountain, while surrounded by a corporate-looking female entourage. The first layer of the work interprets the concept of involuntary or latent memory, a concept defined by Marcel Proust in his book In Search of Lost Time. There, the author recounts an intense moment of sensory experience triggered by the taste of a biscuit dipped in tea, a moment that suddenly brings back a hidden memory of his. Similar to this “Prussian effect”, the work transports us to an alternate space, creating an imaginary analogue virtual reality, while the fog removes details, confusing our senses.

Initially, our olfactory associations transport us to imaginary woodlands or other natural landscapes, but as we enter the space, our perception of context is quickly overturned by the introduction of the work’s second layer – that of the choreographed movements of the four female protagonists. Seemingly belonging to a different corporate universe, the heroines perform different tasks of an office-like nature. Methodical and sometimes ritualistic movements frame a recurring moment of labour and collaboration. The performance is divided into four acts, forming a circular cycle of rhythmic choreography. Semi-erased from the foggy environment, the “office tasks” resemble an awkward dance of machines in space, in a context that comically recalls a smoky burning building or other apocalyptic landscape.

In The Room at The End of The World the relationship between nature and people is blurred and distorted – using the techniques of Romanticism, which through the depiction of fog express ideas of the sublime; but here they are paradoxically contrasted with the mundane and banal. The Room at The End of The World transports us to an alternative timeless purgatorial space.

Curator: Aga Mlinchak

Special thanks to the participants Nora Trifonova, Teodora Dzherekarova, Simona Shankolova, Maria Makedonska, and Anna Ivanova.