5-channel video installation

Karolina Breguła’s 5-channel video installation The Storm features five people standing by the sea, watching a gathering storm. Their serious faces seem to look directly at the viewers. Behind them, a hilly landscape with green-brown vegetation stretches out under a cloudy sky.

As the waves grow higher and the storm intensifies, the characters engage in monologues about the sea and a distant island. As they do, their reactions reveal hidden emotions. Instead of standing together in the face of the threat, social tensions become apparent. Disparaging comments and doubts about a possible rescue suggest that the community is more shaken by internal conflicts than by the impending storm. The real drama takes place on a linguistic level: The individual memories and stories stand isolated, without connecting to a common narrative. The result is a web of conflicting perspectives that divides rather than unites.

This fragmentation is also reflected in the soundtrack. The five characters’ voices are arranged like a vocal composition: sometimes one person speaks alone, then several at once. This layering creates an atmosphere of uncertainty and ambiguity. What really happened remains unclear – the stories contradict each other and leave room for doubt.

The arrangement of the monitors in a semicircle reinforces this distance from the unfolding events: the viewers can see the faces of the characters but have no direct view of the events themselves – the destruction on the island remains completely hidden from them. They are left to reconstruct the story solely from the characters’ subjective accounts and conflicting narratives. Thus, the installation raises fundamental questions about the construction of truth. The Storm makes it possible to experience how reality is shaped not only by what is experienced but, above all, by the way it is narrated.

• Sektion Section: Exhibition
• Programm Programme: Witnessing Witnessing