IN PASSING III | 2020
A blurred winter landscape can just be discerned in the still frames of Ludi Kalrucci's video. Filmed from the window of a moving train, the landscape rushes past in the clip, which is slightly over three minutes long. Occasionally, a building, a road, or a traffic sign can be seen, but mostly it is the frost-covered trees and shrubs that seem to dance before the eyes. Despite the simple explanation, these are surreal images that appear to move both forward and backward, edited with cuts. Ludwig Stengel has also adjusted their pacing. A fellow student, he reports, used the metaphor of kneading and shaping the material. With this notion, the video footage taken north of Belgrade shortly after sunrise becomes a material with a certain elasticity, ultimately taking on a corporeal quality. Individual details briefly emerge from the swirl of images. They can be focused on for the briefest moment, only to immediately dissolve again into the visual putty.
Ludi Kalrucci has engaged with the movement by which the human eye perceives objects. Usually, the eye scans objects spatially and identifies them. This happens abruptly and through the distinction of form and distance. However, if the object moves, the eye follows it. It can no longer scan but moves fluidly with it. When looking out of a moving train, both types of perception are combined. Depending on how far an object is from one's own horizontal movement, the foreground and background move at different speeds when focusing on the object. The fact that a fixed, objective standpoint is not possible can ultimately be applied to life situations where reality is questioned. The visual noise becomes a metaphor for the intoxication that determines the perception of the environment.
Text: Jochen Meister (Translated via GPT4)
