Mircea Cantor
Wind Orchestra (2012)
13 secs looped
edition of 7

Filmed during a period when Mircea Cantor began incorporating his children into his video work, Wind Orchestra (2012) captures an unsettling moment on loop: his young son lines up three knives on a table and blows them over like dominoes. The sharpness of the knives instantly disrupts the familiar aesthetic of a home video, introducing an undertone of tension and unease as the child casually engages with these dangerous objects.

Cantor’s embrace of a “poor” aesthetic within a minimalist setting underscores his intention to “talk about poetry through politics.” By stripping away costumes, elaborate sets, and music, he adopts an economy of means that redirects the viewer’s attention to the subject’s body and its relationship with the spectator, foregrounding a contrast between control and unpredictability, order and its collapse.

As the orchestrated clatter of falling knives heightens the sense of disquiet, the child’s invisible breath and the viewer’s silent sigh of relief become vital, unspoken components of the work. These subtle, intangible elements evoke a complex emotional response that fluctuates between delight in a mischievous act and anxiety provoked by a potentially weaponised object. Here, the act of playing with a dangerous tool gestures toward the triumph of life over death.

The concept of uncertainty is a recurring theme in Cantor’s practice. Cantor suggests that contemporary society seeks to eliminate uncertainty by enforcing behavioural norms and producing predetermined outcomes, ultimately shaping a more predictable world. Yet rather than viewing uncertainty as a threat in socio-political contexts, Cantor embraces it as a generative force—“a cry, an alarm to let things happen.” For him, the necessity of uncertainty resists the disempowerment of humanity and rejects the drift toward mechanical, regulated senescence.

Wind Orchestra (2012) was included in his solo exhibition at Rennie Museum held November 2014 to March 2015. The work has also been featured in Cantor’s solo exhibitions at esteemed institutions worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, the STUK Arts Centre in Belgium, and the Fine Arts Museum of Nantes.

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