Rubik, 2008

Live performance and video performance, 16:9, sound, color, 18 min 17 sec

Rubik is a live performance based on the famous mechanical puzzle invented in 1974. On stage is a large cube composed of smaller cubes on each side. Each cube, interconnected with the others, can be easily rotated and interchanged. Using only his body, the artist can neutralize the images on the surface of each cube or become an integral, living part of them. The rotation of a single cube causes a temporal, visual, and functional alteration. By the very nature of its structure, Rubik is to be understood as a work in constant transformation. Rubik is a profession of “faith” in destiny—in that element that attracts and determines other facets of parallel stories, places, events, facts, coincidences, and roles. All of this occurs synchronically within an expanded temporal dimension. The cube’s potential combinations serve as a meeting point where distant events and people come together, for a brief moment, on this earth. Rubik is a delicate portrait of humanity and our present time. It is a multiethnic Babel of human stories and fates, moods and humor, in which the performance’s escapism transforms into a journey, narrative, emotional tension, and programmatic cerebralism. Rubik is a challenge for the mind. Here, different geographies connect as time is reset, and the present coincides with the artist’s own body. Taktharova, Kabul, New York… Babel: a brick construction and a metaphor for apparent diversity and close distances.

Peter Parker, 2008

Live performance and video performance, 16:9, sound, color, 3 min 15 sec

Stretched across the facade of a building is a comic strip of Spider-Man. In this scenario, the artist steps into the shoes of an ordinary superhero—more Peter Parker than Spider-Man, more everyday man than superhero—allowing the world to be reduced to sharp fields of color as he moves through the city. Peter Parker is a freelance photojournalist as well as Spider-Man’s secret identity. Despite his great powers, he is not exempt from the daily struggles faced by most people, such as balancing a love life with work commitments and doubting major decisions. All of this is compounded by his dual life, which forces him to navigate countless obstacles. The character is an image that effectively summarizes the dualism between the normal man and the joyful possibility of discovering oneself to be Super—that is, extraordinary. Or conversely, an icon who, having lost his superpowers, is forced to wait patiently for the bus to reach his destination.