Title: Real World
Artist: Cristian Păsat
Country: Moldova
Cristian Păsat was born in Chișinău, in the Republic of Moldova, a post-Soviet country influenced by both its communist past and Romanian culture. Much of his life has been spent in the countryside, and this experience is reflected in his films, which combine rural and urban themes.
Over the years, Cristian has won numerous awards and has been selected for various festivals and competitions. These include the Media Award for Young People, organised by the Youth Media Center, Official Selection at VIDEOMINUTO, organised by the University of Zaragoza, Special Selection at the Covid-19 Kent Youth Film Challenge, organised by the Kent Film Foundation, as well as International Selection at the Limestone Coast Video Art Festival and Selection at ANIMAPHIX – International Animated Film Festival.
Artist’s Vision:
The main idea of the work is to erase the boundaries between real and imaginary. In a cardboard box will be projected images filmed in the city, as well as generative images that have only existed in the pure imagination of artificial intelligence. Thus the aim of the project is to create a micro-universe encapsulated in the space of this box. A universe that will extend the reality of the post-Soviet space, by amplifying it and inducing the effect of illusion, whereby the viewer looking at the small window leading to a city that existed and at the same time did not, will ask the question: what remains to be reality?
The artist’s idea of bringing together real footage and photos with AI generated content opens up the hot topic of tools that enhance or sabotage our artistic discourse and how creators relate to them. The video’s four sections, presented to the viewer as a classic window, conveys a world of past and present, real and imaginary, building layers of nostalgia, a certain softness and , in the same time, a feeling of unease that grows proportionally. The upper central section, small and horizontal, presenting at first characters from old black and white photos, is a pivotal connection to “the reality of the post-Soviet space”, those characters being witnesses to the wild transformations taking place both in soviet times, but also in the merciless transition that followed in the 90ties. The viewer may imagine afterwards, when the layer changes to crop form coloured blured images, the mixed feelings experienced by the inhabitants of the city presented in the main section, a bigger rectangular central section with both moving and still images. A certain poetic conveying of said feelings, present in the lateral section of the video, that alternate concred and blured images, most of them of nature, enhanced by the objective worded description, brings out the biggest question mark intended by the artist: what remains to be reality? – Sabina Ulubeanu, curator