ITI KASSER's personal exhibition „Flocking Practices“will be opened in Hobusepea gallery at 6 pm on October 5th, 2011.

Current photo and video exhibition is based on the motif of a flock of birds, its abstract and dynamic patterns and behavioural logic.

With perfect coordination, a flock of birds as a uniform organism is momentarily able to maneuver and change direction. There is no leader who would plan or guide the movement pattern in a flock – every individual in the group can initate a change of movement that, in turn, will pass from one bird to another as a wave. However, any attempt to change the dynamics of a flock requires acceptance from a certain amount of birds in order to pass the message in general. The ones flying in peripheral position of a flock are in the most critical situation when changing direction as they can be dropped behind the flock.

As for people, the principle of „the bigger flock the safe it is“ seems to work as a mental phenomenon. Flocking behaviour functions when ideas and attitudes are being accepted and spread in social environment – that, in turn, forms our daily routes and movement patterns.

In a human flock, even the most abstract physical movement marks the surrounding environment and all possible kinds of obstacles, power strategies and ideological views, social agreements and unwritten laws, or attempts to swim against the current.

Currently exhibited photographs are presenting concourses where the tracks and signs of various human flocking practices meet. The artist has picked environments with structured movement patterns that are being stubbornly restructured by men who design the so-called „desire line“ for themselves in order to reach the destination as quickly and conveniently as possible. Desire line can be viewed as a flocking resistance to impelled flocking.

Iti Kasser

Exhibition will be open until October 17, 2011.

Special thanks to: Helen Melesk, Reimo Võsa-Tangsoo, Marit Mihklepp.

Exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.