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Eleven Thousandth of a Second Long Ride
2013, installation, 70/70/30 cm, image transfer on polyurethanic foam, aluminium profiles, wood, sponge, video

Cristian Bors and Marius Ritiu won the ARTE prize during the 2011 edition of the Cutlog Art Fair in Paris with their project No Borders equals Tolerance. For the first edition of the Cutlog Art Fair in New York, they present Eleven Thousandth of a Second Long Ride, a new piece intended as the first project in a series of works related to the Large Hadron Collider built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. The LHC is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator which recently enabled scientists to prove the existence of the theorized Higgs boson. The title of the work refers to the 27 km travelled by the particles in the 11000th part of a second.

Cristian Bors and Marius Ritiu's Eleven Thousandth of a Second Long Ride is a complex metaphorical system commenting on the intimate nature of their common artistic activity. The octogonal composition of the image is based on the geometrical structure of a section of the European particle accelerator. Each compartment is filled with photographs, self-portraits taken by Cristian Bors and Marius Ritiu in a Belgian greenhouse. Like bats, they hang with their head down on the greenhouse's metal structure, a reference to vampires they are frequently associated with because of their Romanian origin.

Cristian Bors & Marius Ritiu also assimilate themselves in this work to the 'god-particle' described by scientists in order to find elements about the creation of our universe. The distortion of the images due to the perspective effect accentuates the idea of particles moving at the speed of light and colliding to give birth to new elements. In a time where the genius of the individual is commonly highly praised by the media, Eleven Thousandth of a Second Long Ride reconsiders the notion of collaboration by examining Bors & Ritiu's creative process.

The project is related to Cristian Bors' own initial training as an engineer and can be seen as an attempt to realign past and present in the same way as scientists currently try to observe and explain the very first moments of the birth of our universe. To realize their new work, Cristian Bors and Marius Ritiu developed a new and original printing technique using polyurethane foam. The visible image is a reversed image of the original printed picture glued on the foam: a simple intervention corrupting reality and putting into perspective how our consciousness can be reassured by scientific knowledge...

Simon Delobel, Antwerp, April 2013.

Exhibitions:
Eleven Thousandth of a Second Long Ride (sponsored by ARTE France), Cutlog Art Fair, New York, (USA)