ZEITGEIST

Main Exhibition, Rotlicht Festival 2023
Atelierhaus der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien (Semperdepot)
Vienna, Austria
18–26 November 2023

Festival Director: Dino Rekanović
Organized by ZIGUTAMVE – Verein für zeitgenössische Fotografie

The exhibition presented the winners of the 2023 Open Call,
selected by an international six-member jury.

JURGIS GEČYS
Unexposed, 2021
Photographic installation, 4 × 5 inch glass negatives

At the opening of the Rotlicht Festival 2023 at the Semperdepot in Vienna, ten visitors gathered in darkness under the red light of a photographic darkroom. Ten unexposed glass negatives, approximately forty years old, were unpacked for the first time. Each visitor received one plate and was invited to write or draw a memory of something that had been imagined but never realised. By removing parts of the photographic emulsion, these unrealised memories were inscribed as lines, words and drawings directly into the glass. The plates were then placed on slender metal stands throughout the exhibition space.

When the lights were turned on, the negatives and the memories carried on them were exposed together for the first time. The photographic emulsion reacted to light, producing intense reds, oranges and yellows, while the inscribed lines and texts emerged across their surfaces. An unexposed photographic negative now carried the trace of an unrealised memory — two things that had never entered reality meeting through a single act of exposure.

Over the following days, the colours gradually faded. Some plates changed, cracked, or broke. The negatives, preserved for decades, slowly faded away, while imagined memories that had never been realised began to take form.