Stopover 20/21: Elena Kruglova und Özlem Arslan

22.4.2021

»Stopover« – einmal jährlich stellen unter diesem programmatischen Titel die Studierenden im M.A. Photography Studies and Practice ihre aktuellen Arbeiten im UG des Museum Folkwang aus. In Form eines Zwischenstops sollen Einblicke gewährt und soll zu einer Diskussion eingeladen werden. Im Katalog finden sich neben den fotografischen Werken auch kurze Texte, die direkt an die Bilder adressiert sind. Verfasst wurden sie von den Studierenden des M.A. Photography Studies and Research. Hier schreibt Özlem Arslan an Elena Kruglovas Serie »rocket sience«.

Space Mission

Without knowing what awaits me, I come forward and behold what you have to offer me. At first sight, everything seems familiar; flowers wrapped in plastic, a car, and glasses. However, I cannot help but feel that there is something else that lays behind the objects my eyes reflect upon in you. You are photographs dealing with objects one encounters in everyday life. Nevertheless, there is something unconventional about those objects. The longer I look at you, the more I feel myself detaching from the physical world. Slowly but yet firmly, you lure me into another place. I can neither escape nor can I stop you. So, I let go and just let myself get carried away by you.

Like an astronaut hovering weightlessly in space, I am being drawn deeper and deeper by you till I reach a place in which everything I knew is different. As if they were erased the moment you were captured. While I am floating freely in space like an environment you have pulled me in, I am starting to search and to explore my surrounding. Some of what I find excites me and some of it scares me. I discover colors, reflections, and functions I have not seen or suspected before. You let me enter into a world where suddenly the known becomes unknown. What do I do with these new discoveries?

Abruptly, I find myself in a position comparable to the one of a scientist, trying to find logic in the chaos I am lost in. You make me doubt and you make me question. Then, eventually, you let me find meaning in my space discoveries and let me gain new insights. You offer me a new perspective. A perspective different from everything I have seen before.  

I find myself rediscovering the meaning of the known and the unknown. I come to realize that there is a fine line that stands between them which I had not or rather refused to recognize before. I witness the experience of sudden change which can be shocking on the one hand but intriguing on the other. I become aware of the dilemma of acceptance and the difficulty of adjustment. All of these insights only through the space mission I was taken to by you, the unconventional photographs of what I used to believe to be the familiar.