This work combines two activities that I enjoy doing:
1) tracing/touching beautiful horizons with my index.
2) collecting prescriptions for public behavior (civic regulations) which I re-record in rural arias.
Disconnecting sound and image , overlapping the two practices, close and far, past and present, personal and public, rural life and urban life, I search for continuity and connection by exposing the gaps that fragment experience of life.
Next to my focus
This video follows a simple routine: every day for about month and half I waited for something “exceptional” to strike my attention and than I purposefully put the objective of my camera in the space just next to my Point of interest and observed what gets visible next to the central focus.
This “ Next to focus” space became the place for convergence of multiple physical realities, a place for new perceptions, sensations and ideas, a place for a dynamic dialogue between the reality that is in focus, and the one that is out of focus. For example: let’s say I see a whale in the Pacific Ocean. In order to be true to my practice, I move my gaze from the sensational spectacle of the whale to the surface of the water just next to it. I give this space my total attention for three minutes. In the beginning, it is difficult. I have to accept that I need to let go of something exceptional but then: total magic! New shades, sounds, accidental traces of water, movement, light, an itch on my left shoulder, the voice of a kid playing nearby, an insect crossing my field of vision, the heaviness of my right leg over the left, a sudden regret, an acceptance, and a curiosity about all those things which are all the time around us.
NXTOMYFOCUS-vimeo upload 77789 from Maria Kefirova on Vimeo.
maria kefirova 
