the head of vitus bering

When Vitus Bering completed his circumnavigation of northeast Asia on 13 August 1728 to prove that Asia and America are two separate continents, the coast of America was covered in fog and remained largely invisible to the discoverer. On the tracks of discovery. and at the same time groping through the dark; a confusing state, the various levels of which are made evident in Michaela Schwentner´s video the head of vitus bering. The picture shows the black silhouette of a landscape emerging from a brilliant white. The landscape is grouped on a horizontal and in some places also on a vertical axis. It changes, seems to oscillate
between various aggregate states. Forms become visible or invisible; colors fluctuate between white-gray-black. A type of fata morgana in a desert of ice. Also the sound and the text make reference to a state of madness – or at least heightened sensibility; the violin bows are tense, the voices entangle and distort.
Konrad Bayer´s text Der Kopf des Vitus Bering (1958 ff), which provides all of the quotations, is Schwentner´s immediate reference point. Bayer is interested in the figure of Bering as a location “from which relations can be created” and quotes André Breton, according to whom reality is not the sum of the facts, but rather, the sum of possibilities. Bayer´s text is a mosaic of facts, thus on the one hand history – and on the other, thoughts and speculations, mounted according to strict rules. He creates a dense atmosphere whose quality lies in the gaps that hold the knowledge of wealth, of reality. Also Schwentner´s video breathes this intensity; text, sound, and image combine to something greater than the sum of what happens and what is heard. It presents the abundance in its emptiness.
(Sylvia Szely)

Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt