The work continues as traces
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Lullaby for the River
2003Author: Марина Ражева
Letters of Water
2025The work was presented as documentation.
It continues through viewing, circulation, and memory.
Traces in perception
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Documentation on view
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Online traces: Instagram
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The Golden Apple of Istanbul
Golden Apples, R²Self-residency in Istanbul
2025
Locations: Beyoğlu, Sultanahmet, Kadıköy, Galata Bridge
Medium / Format: Site-specific action, photography, ephemeral gesture
The Golden Apple of Istanbul is a site-specific project unfolding through photography and a performative gesture. It explores how symbols travel through cities, histories, and bodies, and how meaning shifts when an object moves from being held to being released.
A real apple, coated in gold paint, appears across historical and everyday locations in Istanbul. Photographed against the textures of the city (streets, bridges, water, architecture), it becomes both an object and a mirror, reflecting ideas of power, desire, value, and transience.
Photographic exploration
The first stage consists of a series of photographs made across different parts of the city. The golden apple is carried, held, placed, and framed within Istanbul’s layered urban landscape.
Neither staged nor theatrical, these images register quiet encounters between the object and the city, moments of pause, attention, and subtle displacement.
The apple functions here as a wandering symbol. Once associated with conquest, imperial ambition, and ultimate reward, it is reintroduced into everyday space as fragile, temporary, and exposed to weather, touch, and time.
Performative gesture
The photographic sequence culminates in a simple action. From the Galata Bridge, the golden apple is released into the Golden Horn.
This gesture transforms the apple from an image into an event. No longer possessed or displayed, it becomes an offering to the water, to the city, to history itself. Floating briefly among fishermen, boats, and passing gulls, the apple drifts without destination.
The act was carried out privately, without announcement, during a period of heightened artistic activity in the city, remaining outside any official framework. Passersby became incidental witnesses rather than an audience, encountering the action without explanation.
Conceptual context
Historically, Istanbul has been described as the “Golden Apple of the World”, a metaphor for power, desire, and the ultimate prize of empire. By releasing the apple into the Golden Horn, the project gently dismantles this image, shifting it from possession to passage, from monument to movement.
The golden apple ceases to function as a trophy. Instead, it becomes a message without an addressee, a symbol set free and allowed to drift, disappear, or transform.
Process and documentation
The project is documented through photography, preparatory images, and a series of photographs from the performative action. Video documentation will be added as an extension of the work. Together, these materials form a narrative that exists between image, gesture, and memory.
What remains is not the object itself, but the trace of its journey, a fleeting intervention connecting city and artist, myth and everyday life, holding and letting go.
Aranyalmás Book
Golden Applesartist’s book
Materials: paper, glue, jute, photography
Dimensions: 35 × 45 × 8 cm
Year: 2025
Aranyalmás Book is an artist’s book conceived as a tactile object and a visual poem.
It is assembled from crumpled paper, sewn with jute threads, and incorporates photographs of objects and actions from the project Golden Apples.
The book has no rigid binding or fixed form.
Each page exists as an individual fragment that can be turned, revisited, and shifted. Through handling and viewing, the book gradually changes: it wears down, loosens, and retains traces of touch and time.
Turning the pages becomes part of the work itself.
The sound of rustling paper, the resistance of the material, and the weight of the pages shape the experience of reading as a physical act rather than a purely visual one.
Aranyalmás Book engages with themes of memory, choice, and letting go.
Golden apples appear here as images of attention and gift — something that can be found, held briefly, and then released.
Aranyalmás Rácalmás – The Golden Apples of Rácalmás
2025, Golden ApplesGolden Apples: a visual poem in five episodes
Created for the 5th International Symposium of Land Art, 2025 | Rácalmás, Hungary
About the project
Aranyalmás Rácalmás (Golden Apple Rácalmás) is a site-specific visual poem exploring memory, dreams, and transience. The project’s name plays with Hungarian words: Rácalmás is a town whose name contains the word “apple,” and Aranyalmás adds the image of a “golden apple,” a rare fruit symbolizing the uniqueness and value of the place.
The series unfolds in five episodes, where golden apples guide the visitor through questions of presence, attention, and letting go. Each episode combines objects, gestures, participatory actions, and photography to create ephemeral narratives across the island and the bridge.
Prologue
On the island, among trees and grasses, the promise of paradise appears both evident and hidden.
Every apple becomes a question, a memory, a dream, and a treasure.
Some apples embark on a journey along the water, carried by currents of life and time; others remain, waiting to be discovered.
This project is about transience, choice, and transformation, and how we preserve and reshape memories.
Episodes Overview
Episode 1. Almák-Álmok / Apples-Dreams
Apples are the fruits of nature. Dreams are the hidden fruits of the soul.
Golden apples are hidden on the island among roots and driftwood. To those who find them – joy.
Episode 2. Álomfogó – Almafogó / Dreamcatcher – Apple Catcher
A special catcher gathers dreams and wishes. Visitors can tie pebbles, feathers, or knots to its threads, leaving traces of their own stories.
Episode 3. Fűggöny / Grass Curtain
Grasses woven into a mat frame a golden apple at the center – the heart of the island. Visitors can photograph through the golden apple, capturing fleeting moments.
Episode 4. Különleges? / Something Special?
Among a hundred crumpled paper balls, a golden apple shines in the sun. This object invites reflection on how we seek the special and how it transforms perception.
Episode 5. Híd álma – Hét alma / Dream of the Bridge – Seven Apples
Seven golden apples are cast into the water from the bridge, drifting away like dreams released into the flow of life. Visitors witness the happening and the act of letting go.
Process
The project was created during August 12–19, 2025 in Rácalmás, Hungary, as part of the symposium dedicated to Sándor Márai’s The Herbalist and in homage to the work of Mária Bartuszová.
An artist book documents the visual poem and the process of the Golden Apples project.
Exhibited at
- “Bridge” exhibition, 2025, Rácalmás, Hungary
- “In the Footsteps of Time” exhibition, 2026, Várnegyed Galéria, Budapest, Hungary
Golden Apples
Golden Apples, R²2024-2025
Golden Apples is a series of site-specific projects exploring transformation, ritual, and perception. Through subtle gestures, objects, and photography, ordinary spaces are turned into stages for ephemeral interventions.
The golden apple—symbol of desire, knowledge, and exchange—becomes a catalyst for attention and meaning. Each episode engages the environment, participants, and the artist, creating fleeting narratives that exist in memory and image.
The series works as a conceptual principle, allowing the idea of “golden apples” to unfold across locations and forms, while each episode remains unique.
Anatomy of Cities
Anatomy of the city, R²Anatomy of Cities explores the city as a living organism. Through listening, color, memory, and movement, each project acts as a sensory instrument, tuning attention and inviting participants to notice what usually goes unseen.
The city becomes a field of subtle discoveries, where perception itself is the medium and every encounter opens a new layer of urban life.
If PanGorMonium tunes attention through inner listening, Shoot for Color tunes the eye and body through color, texture, and light. Together, these approaches explore different ways of experiencing the city.
Shoot for Color
Anatomy of the cityShoot for Color is a participatory practice that explores the city through color, attention, and careful looking.
The project consists of actions, photo marathons, and individual walks. It treats color not as decoration but as a way to pay attention to the city and inhabit it more fully.
It is a shared activity without competition. Participants create a personal experience of the city where perception itself becomes the medium.
Within Anatomy of Cities, Shoot for Color works as a visual and color-based instrument.
Letters of Water
2025Káptalanfüred, Hungary
site-specific action
Letters of Water unfolds as a temporary action.
Water is used to draw on stone.
The image appears and disappears.
The remaining water is carried back to a dried lake.
The work exists as an act of return.
It continues as traces in memory, in space, in attention.
Material
Action
Trace
Disappearance
Transfer
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Release
Cappadocia: A Very Curious Place
R²Published in “Yugra / Real Estate” Magazine, Issue 3, May 2008
Section: Architectural Impressions. Personal Dimension
By Marina Razheva and Dmitry Razhev
Photography by the authors
This early publication captures one of our first joint reflections on space, presence, and the surreal logic of landscapes. The article, though significantly edited and abridged by the publisher, offers a glimpse into the layered perception of place that would later evolve into our method of Betweenness. Cappadocia’s dreamlike terrain, full of voids, traces, and transformations prompted a personal and poetic response that blurred the lines between architecture, memory, and myth. This was one of our first attempts to “write from inside the landscape,” sensing the echoes beneath the surface.
