PENULTIMA
/ solo show / 30.05 - 10.06.2018 / FFTN, St. Petersburg /

Penultima is a game of inductive logic, played on a chess board. The rules for each piece vary from game to game, and are initially kept secret from the players. Esseintially, the goal of the game is to discover enough rules to make the game playable.

Revolving around the rules (or lack thereof) of this game and the lyrics of old suggestive Irish hunting song, "Penultima" takes a viewer on a cyclical journey of relationships, each of which turns out to be second but last. Every step of the way - the dryspell valley, the lightning strike of the new encounter, the observation, the moisture, the hunt, the slip up that ruins it all, and the new round - are illustrated in a multimedia installation. 6-channel video, drawings, and found poetry were installed in FFTN gallery in 2018, and again in 2020 in a ground floor window as a part of public art festival Art Prospect (St. Petersburg).
Libretto:
1. dryspell
2. observer / mystery
3. encounter (thunder)
4. desire
5. prey
6. exchange
7. flaw
8. unbearable/ fatigue
9. retrospection
10. ⟳
turned off
gasp
erection
leak
Oh Sally, my dear, it's you I'd be kissing
Oh Sally, my dear, it's you I'd be kissing
She smiled and replied, you don't know what you're missing.

Oh Sally, my dear, I wish I could wed you,
Oh Sally, my dear, I wish I could bed you,
She smiled and replied, then you'd say I'd misled you.

If all you young men were hares on the mountain,
If all you young men were hares on the mountain,
How many young girls would take guns and go hunting?

If all you young men sung like blackbirds and thrushes,
If all you young men sung like blackbirds and thrushes,
How many young girls would go shaking the bushes?

If all you young men were fish in the water
If all you young men were fish in the water
How many young girls would undress and dive under?

But the young men are given to frisking and fooling,
Young men are given to frisking and fooling,
I'll leave them alone and attend to my schooling