CURA.

One summer night in 2023, Lenard Giller saw a brief flash in the sky—an event he later learned was tied to the Perseid meteor shower, when Earth passes through debris from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, causing meteors to burn up in the atmosphere. The flash triggered an immediate response from the environment: birds chirped erratically, and dogs barked. Giller instantly assumed the flash was artificial, perhaps an explosion, light display, or high-powered laser. As the experience unfolded, it pulled him into an entanglement with his initial misperception—an evocative ambience born from false premises.

The experience echoes the Mandela effect, where a group remembers an event differently than it occurred, often in a way that feels impossible. Some link this to alternate realities, while psychologists cite collective false memories or the brain’s tendency to reconstruct events. Like the meteor shower, such instances blur the line between the real and unreal, showing how our minds interpret the unknown through frameworks that don’t always match reality. Cognitive dissonance—when conflicting beliefs and experiences cause discomfort—further amplifies this effect. When faced with an event that challenges our understanding, we often create narratives to reconcile it, making it feel unreal or supernatural.

Giller’s experience highlights the malleability of perception, but cognitive processes also align with scientific perspectives. Embodied cognition, for instance, suggests our cognitive functions are rooted in bodily experiences, allowing us to intuitively grasp concepts like distance or speed while walking, without consciously calculating them. This extends to creative problem-solving, where we sometimes “feel” the correct solution before fully analyzing a problem. In fields like geometry or number theory, mathematical relationships are often understood through intuitive logic. Pattern recognition also plays a role—our brains excel at identifying patterns in numbers, shapes, and sequences. Similarly, Gestalt psychology asserts we perceive patterns and structures as wholes, not parts, allowing us to sense similarities between geometric shapes without calculating their ratios or angles.

This oscillation between objective reality, perception, and its relationship with art forms a framework in Giller’s recent practice. This is evident in two works: systems/structures (2024), a silent digital video transferred from 16mm film, shown at Artissima in Turin with Petrine gallery, and action at a distance (2024), a 5-channel digital audio system presented at MACRO in Rome.

systems/structures is based on a 107.8-foot film reel and consists of ten shots, each showing the same piano in a music shop. The relationship between shot number, distance (in centimeters), and duration (in seconds) reveals a pattern: longer distances—e.g., Shot 01 at 467 cm and Shot 05 at 631 cm—match longer durations, while shorter distances—like Shot 08 at 62 cm and Shot 07 at 150 cm—align with shorter durations. This proportional link suggests a deliberate pacing strategy, connecting the physical space captured with the time it is held on screen. However, this pattern is not a conceptual endpoint but a proposed experience, with its inherent structure driven by curiosity about the effect it has on the viewer.

Like embodied cognition, the work reverse-engineers its experience: first, questioning if it will be “felt,” and second, considering what it will be felt as. The piece further entangles two instruments—the film camera and the piano—highlighting, or forcing, their mechanical similarities.

In a piano, pressing a key causes a hammer to strike the strings, creating vibrations that produce sound. This system relies on precise geometric relationships between the strings, hammers, and pedals. In a film camera, light enters through the lens, passing through an aperture and shutter to expose film or a digital sensor. The piano’s strings and hammers respond predictably to tension and movement, while the camera’s shutter speed, aperture, and focus control light exposure. Both devices function through intricate mechanical patterns that, though often unnoticed, are mathematically precise. Entangling these two systems with a specific logic creates an experience of mathematical precision that transcends reason. This specificity is then obscured by the film’s patina and the atmosphere of the piano and music shop—at a specific time of day, with its sensory nuances. The result is a complex web of relationships, felt in a deliberate and particular way.

action at a distance (2024), composed of a 5-channel digital audio system and an incision in the exhibition wall that creates a window onto the outside space, operates similarly. The incision evokes an exercise often introduced in art schools, where the artist or viewer walks around holding up a passepartout, offering changing frames of the space. This incision introduces a variation in perspective depending on the viewer’s position, while also offering a variable input into the space—allowing light and views to shift unpredictably.

This concept is echoed in the audio system. The system consists of a field recording of a park in Rome—a fixed element—augmented over time by compositions created in collaboration with London-based musician Lara Laeverenz and realized as an installation with the support of sound designer Oriol Campi.

The field recording’s properties—volume, pitch, and speed—shape the compositions by altering and reintroducing them in response to the original memo. When a composition doesn’t cover the full sound spectrum, certain elements, like a bird’s high-pitched call, become more or less pronounced. This creates a dynamic relationship between the “found” sounds and the controlled or artificial sounds of the composition. Their interaction fluctuates, sometimes harmonizing, other times clashing, reflecting how beliefs evolve—sometimes reinforcing, sometimes challenging one another—like the shifting perceptions in the meteor shower story.

What is evoked is an experience that blends fiction and fact, creating atmosphere through the distribution of information, which guides the viewer’s physical movement through the space and complements their mental navigation of the installation. The result isn’t about discerning fact, but about composition and choreography, where the structure itself serves as a framing device, carrying its own affect.

These two works by Giller propose a theory of relations where nothing has to do with anything, and everything has to do with nothing—until, eventually, everything has to do with everything. A blurred boundary between meaning and meaninglessness composes a world where everything is interconnected in ways that may appear nonsensical or devoid of inherent meaning, but which are ultimately productive in their own right.