Mirror, mirror on the wall

Ting-Tong Chang / David Loom / Iva Kontic' / Xinyi Liu / Susana Mendes Silva
Curated by Ming-Jiun Tsai

Vernissage : 24 JUL. 20:00
Open : 24 JUL - 15 AUG. Fr.-So 15:00-20:00
Tamtam 8
Weichselstr.8 10247 Friedrichshain Berlin
http://tamtam8taiwan.blogspot.com/

My project - The Vistulas - for Mirror, mirror on the wall departs from the location of the exhibition space Tamtam 8. The address of this space in Berlin is Weichselstraße, 8. The name of the street derives from the river Weichsel (or Wisła in Polish, Vistula in Spanish, Romanian and English, Vistule in French, Vístula in Portuguese, Vistola in Italian).

Vistula is one of the most important rivers in Poland and its name was first recorded by Pliny in AD 77 in his Natural History. He uses Vistula (4.52, 4.89) with an alternative spelling, Vistillus (3.06). The Vistula River ran into the Mare Suebicum, which is today known as the Baltic Sea. The root of the name Vistula is Indo-European ultimately from pre-Indo-European.  The definitive reference is probably Jordanes (Getica 5 & 17), who uses "Viscla". The Anglo-Saxon poem Widsith refers to it as the "Wistla".[1] 12th century Polish chronicler Wincenty Kadłubek called the river Vandalus from the Lithuanian "vanduo", meaning "water". Jan Długosz in his Annales seu cronicae incliti called the Vistula "White river": "a nationibus orientalibus Polonis vicinis, ab aquae condorem Alba aqua ... nominatur".

The history of this river is very rich and interesting, but when I started my research for this project I realized that the name of the Polish river is widely used to name living beings or inanimate things. And I started to collect references online. What I present for Mirror, mirror on the wall is a collection of selected disparate items that are named Vistula.

The Vistulas, 2010

Installation

B&W framed photograph and printed cronology of Vistula, a Danish steamer; postcard, USA, 1917; notebook with drawing and collage of Corylus Avellana 'Vistula'; colour digital photographs by Diniz Lopes and google map on Rue de La Vistule, Paris; colour digital prints about the asteroid 16689 Vistula and of the scanned file card of the insect Halpe vistula Evans 1937; "Old Jazz Road", 33 r.p.m. record by Vistula River Brass Band; folded cotton top of Vistula knit by noa noa; b&w framed digital prints of Vistula Scott Shotwell (1876-1967); vertical piano and music score from La Vistule by Francis Poulenc; ipod with Huit Chansons Polonaises: La Vistule, Pascal Rogé and Urszula Kryger by Francis Poulenc (1899-1963); and descriptive labels of each object.

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