A A D D Carla Rak COLLAGE #1 2016 Carla Rak’s Collage #1 deals with the appropriation of existing ma- terials and provides them a new context, connecting them with the crochet technique. Like other man- ual techniques, this is based on a constant repetition of a limited set of gestures. Repetition is a found- ing mechanism in many rituals, facilitating abstraction and medita- tion. During the obsessive and re- petitive act of crochet, hand move- ments are combined with a more hidden and secret mental activity, expressed by a picture-in-picture video. The intimate and silent world of manual labour clashes with par- tially blacked-out footage of hunt- ing and space. This depiction of violence and infinity questions our understanding of the bigger pic- ture, and suggests to focus instead on comforting, familiar gestures, such as the crochet itself. The au- dio track, from the 1974 movie Un homme qui dort, stresses the im- portance of the repetitive practice as a pondering act. Athanor №5 page 1 of 7
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Carla RakCOLLAGE #12016
Carla Rak’s Collage #1 deals with the appropriation of existing ma-terials and provides them a new context, connecting them with the crochet technique. Like other man-ual techniques, this is based on a constant repetition of a limited set of gestures. Repetition is a found-ing mechanism in many rituals, facilitating abstraction and medita-tion. During the obsessive and re-petitive act of crochet, hand move-ments are combined with a more hidden and secret mental activity, expressed by a picture-in-picture video. The intimate and silent world of manual labour clashes with par-tially blacked-out footage of hunt-ing and space. This depiction of violence and infinity questions our understanding of the bigger pic-ture, and suggests to focus instead on comforting, familiar gestures, such as the crochet itself. The au-dio track, from the 1974 movie Un homme qui dort, stresses the im-portance of the repetitive practice as a pondering act.
Athanor №5
page 1 of 7
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Car
la R
ak
Institute of Philosophical Studies in Naples and the Cozzi Award from the Benetton Foundation.
Carla Rak lives and works in Rome, Italy, where she was born in 1978.After many years spent as pho-toeditor in a big Italian photojour-nalistic agency, since 2011 works as a freelance editor, consultant and teacher.In 2012 she started also develop-ing her own artistic career, work-ing with different media, mainly collages, photography, writing and video. Obsessed with images, Carla is often interested in explor-ing their nature and boundaries, in playing with their ambiguity and with the transformation of their meanings through time and con-texts, enacting different processes to liberate pictures from their so-lidified history. Her work is often strictly connected with collecting: already existing images are the raw material to question the status of the photographic image and the starting point to stage for them a new atmosphere, chasing in all her projects the unreal, the mis-tery, the hybrid, the unclear. With a degree in Sociology and a PhD in Communication Sciences, her academic writings on photography gained the recognition of the
