TRANSITION (Signed and numbered, edt of 100)

Sergej Vutuc
TRANSITION (Signed and numbered, edt of 100)

Photographs: Sergej Vutuc

Publisher: Self-published

160 pages

Year: 2024

Comments: Softcover, 27,7 x 19,4, b&w photographs. Numbered edition of 100. Signed by Sergej Vutuc.

The term « transition » refers to the evolution between two established states and thus implies a definition of said states within the boundaries of natural fluctuation; only once precise context is provided can it be scrutinized but otherwise is just universally factual. To transition as a person consists in first recognizing, then embracing existence through the mind of a different gender as the culmination of the sensibilities within one individual; in skateboarding, the term tends to designate space that would bind together two distinct points on different planes; most commonly, more or less strict approximations anywhere between the horizontal and the vertical that, eventually, dictate one perceptible singularity.

The skateboarding application of the term is interesting in its intrinsic historical emergence as it usually refers to wave-shaped objects, the justification of which, in itself, partly is inspired by the popular interpretation of natural elements that is the practice of surfing, but also resonates with certain timeless criteria of sensuality, form and grace at least from a purely mathematical standpoint. As such, it is a testament to human adaptation and, also, a representation of projected phantasy turned concrete matter. The concept in itself is rooted in the spectacle the situationists lived to expose.

Now, Sergej Vutuc's « TRANSITION » is a worldwide one, associating photography of self regulated locations and progressive communities from between Fukushima and Fukuoka, Japan - including the autonomous PFK crew - with others in Palestine, on Maidan Square in Kyiv, Ukraine and at the D.I.Y. skatepark of Washington Street in San Diego, U.S.A.; it also is lateral, as new narrative naturally starts protruding from the resulting extension that is the given composition of the ensemble. The technology that supports the images embraces the principle of observable, timely transmutation within one same envelope, blending digital phone snapshots with various types of Polaroid SX-70 film into a global unison of photocopier battery. The skateboard is but a bold excuse for exploring up and around distinct walls in sequence, knocking on doors in passing between inclinations, accumulating and/or leaving marks, and then landing back as yourself into a new situation. Space suddenly admits to its weight in solutions and, thereby, to a possible psychogeography of transition that would be the sensible traces of a cognitive yearning for distinct planes, apparent passageways and successive surfaces in order to progress past timely landmarks as a unity defining, then defying boundaries for each partaking in what appears to be a repetitive pattern.

Aymeric Nocus