Hybris

In classical culture, the sin of hubris was seen as a form of human insubordination to the divine; today, it expresses the anxiety that overwhelms our contemporaries when faced with a risk – at first evasive before it is fully assessed – of loosing the battle in the struggle with their own destiny. In this project, the challenge is “to shed light” on that one suspended moment of hope, when the scene has just been played out, leaving behind tangible traces that are not clearly determinant of subsequent evolution. It remains congealed in its own scenario. The protocol is based on rigorous projection: the views were made in southern Italy inside three different surgery rooms, shot with a large format camera on a tripod, precisely five minutes after the end of the surgery and the patient has been taken away, and ten minutes before the nurses take over to clean and prepare the set for the next surgery. In such lapse of time, the only option is a single frame. The selection of black and white aims at concealing any acknowledgeable or otherwise easily shocking element (blood, traces of the struggle) to circumvent any form of visual overstatement. It all took place between 8:08 am, 21 March and 9 am, 27 March 2009.