Til Vægs

Samara Sallam and Kate Sterchi met at Funen Art Academy in 2017. The two have collaborated in the past, but this is the first time doing so with an ocean between them. On a simultaneous timeline, the two artists are likely sisters, but on this timeline that the collective “we” are currently most conscious to, their earth avatars have incarnated into mirrors of each other’s global experience. Kate and Samara’s friendship and the work they make together is a practice of making fluid internal and external identity markers. Because of Kate’s deportation and the global pandemic, Kate and Samara have worked exclusively with video chat and misunderstandings to create these digital spells for a collectiveness that holds mutation and difference as the generative spark. Climatime Shadow is the companion piece to Sacred Internet in Climatime, which is currently on view at Rønnebæksholm’s exhibition ‘Soil.Sickness.Society.’ Sacred Internet in Climatime is a digital spell woven with words spoken between Kate and Samara from winter solstice (2020) to summer solstice (2021). In this video, words in motion collide, mutate, obstruct, and disappear into a void. Words are a participatory though transient part of storytelling as their meanings multiply with the stories held by the listener. Installed in a small alcove, in a stairwell between floors, the viewer stands in a threshold to listen and watch. Climatime Shadow functions as both a shadow and an echo to Sacred Internet in Climatime. Shadow also means imagination. Shown on public screens in an area that has been designated by the government to be a ghetto, Climatime Shadow uses warped footage of desert landscapes we have called “home.” “…from that acceptance of transience he evolved his vast theory, wherein what is most changeable is shown to be fullest of eternity, and your relationship to the river, and the river’s relationship to you and to itself, turns out to be at once more complex and more reassuring than a mere lack of identity. You can go home again, the General Temporal Theory asserts, so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never
been…” —Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed.

Kate Sterchi once lived and loved in Copenhagen, but now she lives in Marfa, TX. She is a slow painter, working with erasure and emotional alchemy. While she is not a very prolific painter, Kate often also works collaboratively with friends in various media. She is currently working on a bootleg sequel to Repo Man (1984) and is excited about the soundtrack and paper-mache.

Samara Sallam was assigned stranger at birth. In response to being thrown out by the world, Samara now watches life as a documentary that she can edit in order to create sense and connection. Samara is a filmmaker, object maker, herbal nurse, and programmer. She is currently creating a community garden in Sigynsgade and is in the process of writing about magic in storytelling for her MFA essay.