The Library Room

The Bakery presents Ira Eduardovna’s video work The Library Room.

In The Library Room the artist filmed members of her family packing a suitcase in a sort of assembly line structure: her father is naming the object in Russian, the mother is taking the object and placing it on a table, her older sister is wrapping it while Ira herself is placing it in the suitcase. Every time the father names the object, a synthetic voice translates it to Hebrew. The situation happens in a domestic library room.
The narrative was filmed five times: one high angle shot of the table with the suitcase and the hands of the family members, and four frontal medium shots of each family member. The five angles composited together create a layout of a room, as if it’s an open box/cube. The video is projected on an architectural structure of the room layout made of plywood, with a potential to open and close. The father’s figure is elevated above the female figures showing the patriarchal structure of the family. The mobility of the object is evidence of the characters’ temporary station, for the artist those are mutations of space: a library room that found a way to adapt itself to migration.
Above one of the character’s heads there is a small window where repetitive walking up and down the stairs can be seen. The little window is there to interrupt the intimacy of the situation as well as to indicate the architectural location of the room: a cellar.

The cinematography of this piece responds to the architecture of the room where the situation was filmed, the hierarchy of the family members as well as their emotional state: their hands appear to be disjointed from their bodies and the motion seems to be mechanical.