Holding Onto Nothing To See How Long Nothing Lasts

A woman lying with her head on the powder pillow, eyes lowered, white powder on her face and arms — *Holding Onto Nothing To See How Long Nothing Lasts*, 2020 — video still. Courtesy of the artists

Year: 2020
Medium: Video, 4:18 min, assembled unedited from “live” photographs
With: Elana Katz
Exhibited: With Elana Katz’s site-specific installation, House for the End of the World, Berlin, 2020
Published: Protocols Online Journal, Edition #8

An installation in House for the End of the World is situated in what is believed to have once been a bedroom. A wooden platform base that references a bed, a pillow made of an undefined white powder, and a fan above that subtly, nearly imperceptibly, blows the powder away. In the corresponding video, the artist is creating her pillow to perfection, redefining circumstances of “comfort,” allowing the pillow to blow away at will, and, likewise, to transfer onto her skin and the space surrounding. A continued sweeping, scraping, resting, building the surface.

A bare room of exposed brick under a tall window: a long white platform on the floor with a heap of white powder at one end, and a fan mounted on the wall above it — Elana Katz, *Holding Onto Nothing To See How Long Nothing Lasts*, 2020 — installation view

This action is captured by Dario Srbić in a series of “live” photographs. The photographs are then assembled — unedited — resulting in this video. The relationship between Katz as the subject and the never-seen camera operator is markedly undefined. The fragmented interaction creates an uncertainty of the dynamics of power, intimacy, and control that are active in the room. Holding onto Nothing to See How Long Nothing Lasts, in both its parts, examines symbols of home, comfort, and attachment — all in relation to the dysfunctional.

Holding Onto Nothing To See How Long Nothing Lasts, 2020. Courtesy of the artists

A woman seated at the end of a white platform in a dim brick room, shaping a pillow of white powder with her hands, a bright window behind her — *Holding Onto Nothing To See How Long Nothing Lasts*, 2020 — video still. Courtesy of the artists

Seen from above, a woman lying along the white platform in a dark dotted dress, the powder spread beside her head and a lamp glaring at the far end — *Holding Onto Nothing To See How Long Nothing Lasts*, 2020 — video still. Courtesy of the artists