Karina Golisová – Kill Your Darlings

Location: Klemensova 9, Bratislava

“All three parts of the Kill Your Darlings project are acts of confession. A small charity zine, a large booklet almost two meters in format, and a video in which the participants themselves assemble the volume Gulliver-style from large-format prints preselected by the artist from an archive collected since 2017—and finally, their exhibition—represent an opportunity for encounter as well as a manifestation of togetherness. They express closeness and shape who we consider ourselves to be. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. They recall mutuality and shared memories—‘part of this community will see for the first time a multitude of photographs that had remained hidden’—and celebrate what unites them. Photography as proof that none of this was imagined. Photographs, of course, often rewrite memories and favor the photographer’s perspective, but the entire project, including organizing the performative gathering, a ritual of collective activity in the style of feather plucking, is another act of emotional care, maintenance, and investment in relationships—a further visualization of invisible (female) labor. The assembling performance becomes an expression of group disposition, transformed into a book-bound connection. A collective selection of images from one’s own past and their affirmation through binding. The past is useless, roots are pointless if they do not serve to find what is shared. Wojnarowicz ties his shoelaces. The dimension of their friendship is larger than themselves, larger than life—a monument of oversized proportions, both figuratively and literally (for some)—making the manipulation more tangible, more theatrical. ‘It is a materialization of something I have been collecting for years—physical confirmation of the existence of this network of relationships.’

The allure of Kill Your Darlings is fueled by the melancholy of the end of summer, the sense of an ending of a period defined by a circle of friends—‘What if we are never happy again?’—and the hope that if we print it, perhaps it will not disappear, at least in memory. Futile, but understandable. In the reflection that is photography, there is sorrow for the medium’s insufficiency, but also the triumph that the original has value precisely in its mechanical irreproducibility, and yet it can be reborn with the next generation, in a slightly different form. Flipping through it reminds us that even if we live an endless replay, there is always a chance that an intimate connection will reappear somewhere to help us survive it. A chance for beauty, for another attempt. The hope that even after apocalypse, defeat, life and a new version remain. Not hope for a better world—perhaps he believed in a better world that failed, said Bonus, who said it all.”

– Michal Nanoru, project consultant and author of the exhibition text