An open call was held for volunteers to come and recount the plot from the original three Star Wars films, on camera, alone in the studio. Participants were asked to wear black and retell the story to the best of their ability. On twelve monitors, the viewer is confronted with the cacophony of people simultaneously recounting their interpretations.
The desire to stay versus the inevitability of change is a sixteen monitor video installation produced in conjunction with the cinematographer Evan Drolet Cook. Sixteen participants were allocated a role from Alfred Hitchcock’s film, The Birds. Each was filmed isolated in their own home, watching the film in silence. When their allocated character had a speaking part, the participant read the line aloud from the subtitles on screen.
The filmed participants have varying roles in terms of the amount of speaking they need to do. Those who are speaking the lines of the main characters are active throughout the duration of the film, others are allocated bit-parts and have only a couple of lines to speak within the almost two hours of film-watching.
In the gallery space, the video footage was played on monitors, ordered chronologically by speaking part. The film is recreated for the audience without any visual cues, special effects or sound effects. Without knowing the narrative or the order of the speaking parts, the viewer must actively attempt to follow a dialogue across sixteen monitors, without being able to anticipate where the next voice may come from.
The desire to stay versus the inevitability of change was created for a solo exhibition at Franklin Art Works, Minneapolis, in February 2008. A catalogue is currently in production with an essay by Ben Heywood, Executive Director of The Soap Factory.
2006 – 2007
16 monitor video installation
Dimensions variable
The longer I sit, the less inclined I am to stand up is a video installation exploring our constant quest for self improvement and the celebrity cult of the chef. Participants are filmed cooking in real-time to the instruction provided by an episode of 30 Minute Meals with Rachael Ray. The process is documented with a hand-held video camera. The audio features the voice of Rachael Ray narrating her endeavours on the TV program, mingling with the cooking sounds generated by the participant.
This work was originally exhibited in 2006 as part of the Third Floor Emerging Artist Series at the Rochester Art Center, Rochester, Minnesota. Kris Douglas, Chief Curator at the Rochester Art Center wrote the essay for the catalogue. In 2007 the work was extended from eight monitors to sixteen to be exhibited as a Special Project at artDC, the inaugral art fair held in the Washington Convention Center in DC.
2006
5 TV/DVD Units
5 Coffee Tables
Sofa
Dimensions Variable
Five participants were asked to come to a screening of the 1970 film, Five Easy Pieces. Later that day, each individual was asked to recount, on camera in an empty studio, as much of the film as they could remember. Each participant sat in one of five places on a sofa to recount the experience.
The footage from each participant is played back on a monitor placed on a table directly in front of the position on the sofa in which the participant was filmed. All the footage is played back simultaneously, and each dialogue is looped. The cacophony of noise means that the viewer must sit on the sofa, directly in front of each monitor to discern what each individual is saying.
And then I woke up and it was all a dream is a site-specific installation consisting of a large-scale, double video projection exploring the epic themes of love, romance, jealousy, despair, drama and tragedy. Video footage of a walking barking battery-operated dog is played opposite footage of a walking meowing battery-operated cat. The audio and visual footage plays in 1/5th real time in a cavernous warehouse space.
