This is the documentary video (8'40'') of an installation project at the Kinetic Arts and Sciences Center, New York, done by Richard Jochum with many thanks to Elaine Summers, Gudrun Diermayr, Ken Allen, Marlene Nichols, Jan Schmoranzer, Jeep Rosenberg, Anna Aloisia Moser, Brian Hennessey, Peisung Tsai, Heike Rebholz, Sebastien Sanz de Santamaria, Jean Barbaris, Marion Boultbee, Bill Costanzo, Meg Chang, Sam Kedem et al.
The presented works on view are mixed media installations in order to create kinetic spaces. Doing so To and From refers to the creative work of Elaine Summers and her Kinetic Arts and Sciences Center who is dedicated to choreography, dance performances, visual and intermedia art. In greater detail the following pieces will be on display:
Five jumping balls from a toy shop with grips to hold on and for visitors usage while being video taped. Four of them are in a bright yellow, one is in a luminous green. All will show dark green silk screen imprints with the lettering esc and are filled with helium - too heavy to fly but surprisingly light when it comes to jumping. The so called "escape objects" are inspired by working with the computer keyboard and the esc-key in particular - a key that promises immediate exit from the active application. Concerning the bouncing balls this promise comes with a wink: There is no such thing as escape and every attempt to do so is doomed to fail. Or have you ever seen exhibition visitors escaping on bouncing balls through the streets of the city of New York? Sizes: 23 resp. 19 inches.
"The threshold as a swing"is a reconstructed wooden threshold hanging from the ceiling two inches above ground and that way turning into a swing. It symbolizes the space that lies in between two rooms, i.e. the room in between. Who steps on it, will be at the cusp of it trembling and fluctuating. The threshold does not decide between the one and the other area, it stands on both.
And yet being a swing the threshold never stays steady; it is torn, toggling back and forth, swaying "to and from"; till the momentum comes to a crises: identifying the crisis and as such exemplifying a situation that has to be overstepped: by carrying the bride into the next stage of commitment for instance.
The piece recalls a figure from medieval times: the hagazusa (haga = thing; zusa = fence), i.e. the person sitting on the top of a fence and therefore marking the fine (yet fictitious) line between wood and village, between wilderness and civilization, jeopardizing the established rules and certainty of clear cut facts and solid knowledge. Personifying the perils of unknown territory the hagazusas were quickly defamed as witches or hags, indicted and burnt in the flames of inquisition. Size: 32 x 11 x 1 inches; hanging on two 13 feet ropes.
The image of the crisis finds its expression in a further piece: In a pair of dice hanging from the ceiling as if just tossed and frozen in the middle of a "cast". The result of the throw is not clear. Will it be a double six? Or just one and one? Variation of Caesar's saying: The die is cast. The die is NOT cast! Alea NON iacta est! Art is continuously challenged by finding new expressions of our time being. Size: 16 x 16 x 16 inches each.
"Plaster Room. All Waltz!" is the title of the production of an accident that happened to take place at the Kuenstlerhaus Passage Gallery in Vienna in 1998. A video documentary taped and cut by the Austrian media artist Wolfgang Neipl and photographs show how visitors get plastered by medical staff on freely selected parts of their body. Subsequently people dance to a modern version of electronic Waltz music.
"Installation with music for two dancers" is a new piece showing a pair of cd-players with earplugs hanging from a wall and ready to get picked by those visitors who want to dance to the music that is supposed to play different tracks. As the rest of the audience won't hear any music at all, the dancing turns into a performance of movements within space, a riddle about the dancers interaction and potential synchronicity.
To and From took place from Oct 19 - 26, 2005
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