kiss the mist

Krystof Wodiczko – “Guests”

http://www.k-wodiczko.com/guests

Krzysztof Wodiczko at the Polish Pavillion in Venice (Review Essay)

Guests, eternal strangers, the ‘others’. This installation consists of walls
displaying a set of projected windows, with moving silhouettes of
working immigrants, people who, not being ‘at home’, remain ‘eternal
guests’. The voices heard from behind the frosted windows, reveal parts
of their personal stories, in different languages.
It is as if they were working right outside of the building, at times
literally at and on its borders, trying to peer through. The projection
thus creates a sense of a visual boundary, a layer of “in-between,” it
emphasises the space present between ‘we and they’.
“…at once distant from and near to us, strange and familiar.”
“…to actually speak, rather than others speaking about them or on their
behalf.”
“…giving them a possibility of developing their capacity to speak.”
“…borders tend to be interiorized…they live, so to speak, inside us.”
“We see them from our side of this invisible wall but they also see us all
the time, even if they never tell us what they see.”