Elena Sorokina: You Have My Attention

The “goldfish theory” which attests that the human attention span became inferior to that of a goldfish - dropping below 9 seconds, went viral some years ago. It is of course impossible to confirm or deny, but our use of dopamine machines, also known as social media, has reached new heights, and the discussions on attentional standardisation and new attention scapes are ongoing.

With that in mind, this exhibition explores possible histories of attention. It appeals to the ancient figure of the scribe or calligrapher, who inhabits the exhibition spaces, creating a vertiginous perspective for us today. As an example of attention as a devotional, even ascetic practice, scribes excelled in mental and bodily discipline, focusing on precision and mastership of the gesture. In average, it took a monastic scribe roughly one year to copy a mid-size book.

Starting from this encounter of two dramatically distant worlds, the exhibition delves into earlier attention regimes, some very ancient and others quite recent, and reflects on attention as a filter, an artistic medium, a practice of care, and a part of different ecologies. Further, the exhibition considers the intersections between current attentional ecologies and practices of extreme sustained attention, contemplation and attunement permeating historical arts and crafts, and seen through the eyes of contemporary artists. Using computer graphics, quilts or embroidery, invoking medieval manuscripts and epic poems, or pondering on the secrets of newspaper layouts and calligraphy, the participating artists explore different techniques of attention.

Conceptually, the exhibition draws upon the groundbreaking text “The Ecology of Attention” by Yves Citton, which goes beyond the economic terms of attention as raw material and examines attention as a multi-layered, interconnected field operating on entangled levels. Be it an action of the mind, or an operation of the soul, attentional ecologies are fundamental to acknowledging and supporting mutuality and reciprocity, reminding us how “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity”.