Natalia Lyakh

Unforeseen Obligation YX7913XY

Video installation, 2019

Video projection on the surface of moving water, digital print on a transparent polymer

According to many cognitive theories, creativity is the only human, personal and mysterious component of our “Self”. Hypothetically, the psychological “Self” is a combination of conscious and unconscious ideas about reality; intuition, dreams and associations are windows into the unconscious “Self” and source of creative impulses. Perhaps these are our personal paths, orienting us to the elusive modern labyrinths of virtual revolutions. The density of social networks as well as the quantity and quality of virtual dimensions are rapidly increasing; news streams in which reality and facts do not differ from the fake; rating systems that change familiar social connections are all absorbed by the modern “Self”, transforming the relations between the conscious and the unconscious, the rational and the irrational. 

The video installation Unforeseen obligation YX7913XY is a reflection on the possible inequality of these two cognitions — that of the real world and that of the virtual world. In both cases we quench our thirst for knowledge. Cognition of contemporary virtuality might not engage all our sensory systems. Could it be a stimulus for that deep unconscious association, which perhaps is the impulse for our creativity?

The virtual has become our second form of oxygen, and a very comfortable one. Do we still choose the proportion between virtuality and reality in our life? What role does creativity play in interpreting the life process in the era of virtual revolutions? Does it still reveal our unconscious to interact with outside worlds? Is it the very goal of our many-sided all-powerful “Self” that transforms any reality?

Supported by CYLAND Media Art Lab 

Natalia Lyakh (Russia–France)

Multimedia artist. Born in Leningrad, USSR. Earned her Ph.D. in Neurolinguistics on the subject of Brain Asymmetry and Speech Processing. Since 2000, Natalia has devoted her full-time attention to photography, video art, short films & video installations. Influenced by her former scientific research, she invites spectators to discover the magic dimensions and abstractions hidden in simple objects, as seen through the lens of a microscope, the prism of binoculars, a periscope or a kaleidoscope. Works with plexiglass, aluminum, video, video installation.

She has taken part in many art shows and festivals around the world, including Paris, Stockholm, Istanbul, Milano, Rome, New York, London. She currently lives and works in Paris, France.

www.nlyakh.com