An exhibition text for the show An account of by Dagmar Moldovanu and Søren K. Rye, January 2023

Text: Eau Pernice

Translation: Jennifer Russell

Who opened the door to the exhibition space? Did Dagmar Moldovanu recognise you? Did Søren K. Rye
still have cold hands? Didn‘t you say there was a snowman? Could you disregard the cold as you
watched the video installation Anecdote ? At how many bars did it take place? Wasn‘t it 3 last time?
The waiter on duty while the film was being shot; do you think from now on they‘ll count down the
remaining hours of their shift not on their fingers, but by the gaps between them? Does that make time
go by faster? Do the interlocutor‘s hands inadvertently reveal that the anecdote has already been
recounted 4 times? Inadvertently, like when you realise that you, during a conversation about emotions,
have torn the label of your beer into a winding labyrinth, if that makes sense? How many dollars did she
bring to New York? Each time? Does it take 6 seconds to travel from New York 5 years ago to an Eastern
European country 80 years ago? Do we think faster than we believe we do? Do you think after 80 years
of technological advancement we believe there are things that travel faster than human thought? Are we
wrong? Why do you say you think instead of you believe?

Sorry to interrupt again, but you know how someone will start telling a story, and along the way they‘re
about to stumble into one of memory‘s holes and can‘t remember, for example, what it was they were
searching for in attic of their building when they realised that their neighbour‘s mother had been living
in the neighbour‘s attic room for 5 years, or which country he came from, the very convincing man at a
bar with peanut shells on the floor, who claimed to be a descendent of King Solomon, and in their haste
to finish the story, they insert another object or another country, as if these bits of information were
inconsequential? And at a subsequent dinner they tell a similar story, but with different objects? What
details count? The anecdote is, by nature, a monologue which does not permit external questions, but
when it‘s repeated, at times with variations, it seems reasonable to believe there‘s something about the
story that continues to puzzle the speaker; something that can only be reexamined through the
spoken, isn‘t that right? Is the social aspect of recounting an anecdote as well as the anecdote‘s
narrative structure a matter of filling in the gaps? ‘ The story doesn‘t say‘, is the sharp reply when you‘ve
been too curious during the recounting of an impersonal anecdote, but what about the personally
experienced anecdote? Why do we continue to tell anecdotes? Could you imagine the anecdote as long
fingers weaving themselves into associations to the here and now, pulling the present back in time and
asserting its own significance? And that telling an anecdote could also be a negotiation of the
conversation‘s journey in time?

Based on your account, I get the impression that Søren K. Rye is seeking to explore what other objects
might exist in the space of the anecdote; what do you say to that? Could it be that next time you
describe An account of, you remember the drawing of the snowman as a drawing of a butterfly net
instead? Couldn‘t you say that whereas Søren K. Rye adds objects to the anecdote‘s vocabulary, Dagmar
Moldovanu removes them from their histories, creating closed circuits of meaning that are rooted in
their material specificity and in which no element can be replaced? And whereas Søren K. Rye‘s works
can function as an open anecdote with countless variables the speaker can adjust according to context,
Dagmar Moldovanu‘s installations are like a correctly recounted anecdote with a directional narrative
progression that does not permit questions irrelevant to the essence of the story?
The words count and recount are clearly linguistic relatives, although the prior seems to objectively
quantify while the latter contains space for fiction, and I think they are linked as interdependent
actions, where recounting a story becomes a way of distinguishing moments in time and thereby a way
of measuring it; what do you think of that?