These “spaces” are initially presented at the eve of rupture in a recent past: the voting day for the Brexit referendum at the cruise ship, a semi-destroyed forest where the displaced colony of cormorants lives, and the everyday of a tourist attraction of the ruins of a past civilization when we touched things without fear. Through the presentation of these different contexts Litvintseva proposes that no material/political/social eco-system is ever a closed system because it is always necessarily porously connected to others, and it’s from this that both the functioning or the change may come. This ecological interpretation provides an understanding of the dynamic ways in which “spaces” condition each other, are linked together, interrelate and/or contest with, influence, and affect the others.

While the visual story telling is kept in the recent past as a series of mirroring juxtapositions of the moving images evoking the repeatable nature of history, the personal and intimate voice of the narrator is in the now as a grieving ode to the necessity of change but a recognition that a rupture as such does not necessarily bring about the necessary change.

Every Rupture (2020) 

Sasha Litvintseva

HD video

Duration: 13:00

Sasha Litvintseva is an artist filmmaker and writer researcher, whose work is situated on the uncertain thresholds of the perceptible and the communicable, organism and environment, and entropy and quantification, at the intersection of media, ecology and the history of science. Her work has been exhibited worldwide including solo presentations at Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Berlinische Galerie, Modern Art Museum Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Union Docs, New York; screenings including at the Berlinale, Rotterdam, Courtisane, Cinema Du Reel, RIDM, Ann Arbor, Alchemy film festivals; and group presentations at MUMOK Vienna, CAC Vilnius, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Sonic Acts, Berlin Atonal and the Videobrasil, Moscow Young Art, Wroclaw Media Art and Venice Architecture biennales, among many others. Sasha is a lecturer in film at Queen Mary University of London and holds a PhD in Media, Communications and Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths.

Artist Talk | Universal Syntax, Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner, Sonic Acts Festival 2019. De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Artist Talk | Sinkholes in Signification, Sasha Litvintseva and Daniel Mann, Sonic Acts Festival 2018. Dansmakers, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Review | ‘A Demonstration’ seen through the eyes of Maria Morata, Berlinale Shorts, February 2020.

Research Article | Asbestos: Inside and Outside, Toxic and Haptic, Sasha Litvintseva, Environmental Humanities,1 May 2019; 11 (1): 152–173.

Research Article | Geological Filmmaking: Seeing Geology Through Film and Film Through Geology, Sasha Litvintseva, Transformations, Issue 32, 2018.

Review | ‘Top Ten Virtual Shows Across the UK and Ireland’, Critics Choice, Frieze Magazine, January 2021.