Artist Research

Gary Hill

Born in 1951- Foundational artist in video-art, based on single-channel work & video/sound based installations of 1970’s/80’s.

A single moment of the body is ‘captured’ by the single flash of strobe light- edited and formed into a linear text & sequence of a body in various positions up against the wall.

This work refers to succession and the idea of continuity or discontinuity. The succession is anchored into the physicality of the body ( being ‘captured’).

Quite a simple work yet intriguing and dramatic because of the intense and quick strobe light, especially if seen live as performance.

The experience: feels like time is stopped and started. The focus is on the sight ‘captured’ and the word that comes next in the narrative, which creates an experience of continuity and brief intervals of temporal presence.

Bill Viola

Contemporary video artist born 1951

The video begins with the scene of a man, the artist in this case, emerging from the forest and stopping at the edge of a pool. The man suddenly jumps into the pool while crying out, and time is suspended at that very moment. His image remains frozen while the rest of the scene unfolds naturally. The man stays floating in the air in a fetal position and does not fall into the water; the sound of the water cannot be heard. In reality, the man does not fall; he remains suspended in the air, where he remains through most of the video. However, the pool does not remain indifferent; it reacts by generating ripples in the water as if he had fallen into it. This contrast sparks tension between the halted motion and the ongoing motion, between the man suspended as if in a static photograph and the motion of the water, which shows the continuation of the video, which shifts to the dichotomy between the man and nature and between the visible world and the intangible world.

The relatively simple configuration of screens and glass panel yields an involved interplay between image and reflection, object and illusion, self and self-image. Everything is in motion. Everything is a reflection of itself. Nothing is what it appears to be. The human being, as both subject and object, is at the center of this interaction. It is the direct action of the figure, and the resulting shattering of the image surface, that becomes the only substantial, verifying aspect of the world of appearances.

Viola often bases his works on his Buddhist beliefs, one being that there is not a single reality, but rather a constant flow of illusions. I can see it in this work too, in regards to time. Time is extended and becomes an illusion from the reflections of the pool. He plays with both the stillness of time and time passing, in the same work (the man paused in time in contrast to the pool).

Viola is known to use images of transition – from day to night, motion to stillness, time to timelessness – to explore motion, perception etc.

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller

Viewers are given an ipod and headphones and asked to follow the prerecorded video through the old train station in Kassel. The overlapping realities lead to a strange, perceptive confusion in the viewers brain. Hard to document and harder to explain. We only present the recorded audio here, but when doing the walk the real sounds mix with the recorded adding another level of confusion as to what is real and what is fiction. Wear headphones to get the full effect of the original binaural recording.

I like the image of a screen within the screen that is presenting the same setting but at different times. Can see the two different events happening, from the phone and video walk. There is a lot of contradiction between the two screens ie. the presence/absence of people, the events. It is also site- specific.

Refers to memory. The narration refers to past memories, old stories and memorabilia/objects of the past. Metaphors of the past are described as objects ie the closing of the suitcase to forget the past.

This is a really interesting piece of work that I really enjoyed.

“Sound has the ability to transport you through time very easily, so if you give a sense of historical sounds, people are subconsciously taken to that era.” – Janet Cardiff from Fooling Reality: A Conversation with Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller

Further reading:

• ‘Doing’ memory: performativity and cultural memory in Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s Alter Bahnhof Video Walk https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17504902.2019.1578454
• Fooling Reality: A Conversation with Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller https://sculpturemagazine.art/fooling-reality-a-conversation-with-janet-cardiff-and-george-bures-miller/

Douglas Gordon

Born 1966 in Scotland

Douglas Gordon investigates moral and ethical questions, mental and physical states, as well as collective memory and selfhood. Using literature, folklore, and iconic Hollywood films in addition to his own footage, drawings, and writings, he distorts time and language in order to disorient and challenge.

His work is often based on a disruption of perception; by making his audience aware of their own fugitive subjectivity, he questions how we give meaning to our experience of things.

Often Gordon will play with the idea of time within video (which is time-based), using repetition, changing duration, multiple monitors etc.

Richard Linklater

Typically setting each of his movies during one 24-hour period, Linklater’s work explored what he dubbed “the youth rebellion continuum,” focusing in fine detail on generational rites and mores with rare compassion and understanding while definitively capturing the 20-something culture of his era through a series of nuanced, illuminating ensemble pieces which introduced any number of talented young actors into the Hollywood firmament.

The film explores a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of reality, dreams and lucid dreams, consciousness, the meaning of life, free will, and existentialism.^[3] It is centered on a young man who wanders through a succession of dream-like realities wherein he encounters a series of individuals who engage in insightful philosophical discussions.

This last conversation reveals this other character’s view that reality may be only a single instant that the individual interprets falsely as time (and, thus, life); that living is simply the individual’s constant negation of God’s invitation to become one with the universe; that dreams offer a glimpse into the infinite nature of reality; and that in order to be free from the illusion called life, the individual need only accept God’s invitation.

A more surrealistic, abstract approach to the meaning of time, space and reality. This work is more interested in philosophy.

The way the film is edited, using rotor scope animation and heavy distortion, plays on the fragility and the ever-changing perception of time and reality.

Andrei Tarkovsky

In regards to Mirror, time and memory is explored in a nonlinear, incomprehensible way. The order of events are disorganised, unconventionally structured. Its confusing to follow the narrative, and requires a lot of attention.

Ingmar Bergman

Tehching Hsieh

Each work convenes different methods of documentation, challenging what it might mean to archive a life. Together these monumental performances of subjection mount an intense and affective discourse on human existence, its relation to systems of control, to time and to nature.

It challenges the idea that everyday is the same, making it boring and repetitive. Hsieh states that even though he does this single action (over a year), each moment is not the same as before. It is a different day, a different moment of presence. This is represented by the differences of each single photo, that even a single action repeated is never the same as the one before or the one after.

A very simple but time- consuming practice. Documentation can reveal a lot about the past, the time that has passed and the emotion of the exact moment captured in documentation (photos).

Gregor Schneider

Die Familie Schneider took place in neighbouring, identical houses — 14 and 16 Walden Street. The houses were open by appointment only and visitors — always two at a time — collected the front door keys from a small office on the same street. One visitor entered 14 Walden Street alone, whilst the other entered the neighbouring house. After a period of ten minutes, the visitors emerged, exchanged keys and entered the second house. This video documents the visitors’ experience.

Another simple practice, yet very engaging to the audience, especially if you visited the actual site. Gives a sense of deja vu, the feeling of experiencing the exact same moment twice successively (one after the other).

Further reading:

• Review by Craig Garrett https://www.papercoffin.com/writing/articles/schneider.html

Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943

Directed and starred by Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid

The film’s narrative is circular and repeats several motifs, including a flower on a long driveway, a key falling, a door unlocked, a knife in a loaf of bread, a mysterious Grim Reaper–like cloaked figure with a mirror for a face, a phone off the hook and an ocean. Through creative editing, distinct camera angles, and slow motion, the surrealist film depicts a world in which it is more and more difficult to catch reality.

There is a lot of repetition and multiple instances of a single person happening in this work. Time is construed and manipulated here, especially since its within a dream too.

Time within dreams are never constant, one minute might feel like a minute, the order of events are non-consecutive/successive, repetition and overlap of time occurs, varying duration- a surreal way of looking at time. Maybe look into time within dreams? How time is perceived in dreams?

Further reading:

• Does Time actually pass slower in Dreams by Kevin Carr https://filmschoolrejects.com/does-time-actually-pass-slower-in-dreams-c89f9435d6e6/

Zbigniew Rybczyński

Subsequent characters appear in a poorly-decorated room, intertwining but never colliding, all possessed by never-ending rituals.

Another simple practice, with the simple use of editing, masking, repetition and overlapping.

A collage/collection of events that have happened within the room. The continuous layer makes the piece seem more complex. Can see the passing of time, or events within time, all happening in a single moment or shot of the video.

“Thirty-six characters from different stages of life – representations of different times – interact in one room, moving in loops, observed by a static camera. “ – Zbig Rybczynski –Looking to the Future – Imagining the Truth,” in FranÐois Penz, Maureen Thomas, Cinema& Architecture. Mþliús, Mallet-Stevens, Multimedia, BFI, London, 1997

Bruce Nauman

In the installation, the short sequence described above is repeated in three other versions: the couple exchange roles; it is played by two men; it is played by two women. Each version has been edited with slow-motion, colour change, and the addition of footage filmed during the rehearsals in which the action was deconstructed by a man’s voice shouting out instructions. The four looped videotapes are played on twelve monitors stacked up in four columns of three. This results in a wall of staggered action, sound and motion which intrudes aggressively into the space around it: ‘The images are aggressive, the characters are physically aggressive, the language is abusive. The scripting, having the characters act out these roles and the repetition all build on that aggressive tension.’ (Nauman quoted in Simon, p.148.) The viewer is presented with a hypnotic repetition of pointlessly cruel and destructive violence which is both seductive and alienating.

A Matter of Life Death — Table Tennis Excerpt

A Matter of Life and Death (1946) film

The manipulation of time ie. the pause of time (time still standing) or reverse of time – very easily achieved with video editing.

Futher reading:

• A Matter of Life and Death: The Too-Muchness of It All by Stephanie Zacharek – https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5815-a-matter-of-life-and-death-the-too-muchness-of-it-all