A Drawn-out Conflict

A Drawn-out Conflict, 2005, video, color, sound, total running time 86 minutes

A Drawn-out Conflict merges the movies Wild Style and Fast Times at Ridgemont High to create a feature-length amalgam of two distinct forms of youth culture from 1982. The films were selected for their oppositional nature and averaged together to a median length and equal opacity. Audio tracks for each film were isolated and panned hard right and hard left respectively.

“The viewer of A Drawn-out Conflict is confronted with a visual and auditory battle of east coast Wild Style versus west coast Fast Times, the South Bronx versus the Valley. Locations, budgets, filmmaking style, stereotypes, and racial composition of the cast could not be more divergent; nevertheless, from love scenes to credits, the plots of the two films overlap at major benchmarks revealing a surprising formulaic style embedded in each movie.” – L.L. Pendersen

Record

Record, 2005, LightJet print mounted to Sintra and Plexiglas, h 36” x w 36” (top image: installation for Palimpsests at Gigantic ArtSpace, New York, NY; bottom image: Record and enlarged detail)

Record is the spine of my favorite record made in 1983. Although the record spine has been scanned and enlarged for closer inspection, it is so thoroughly worn down from use that little information can be deciphered. Record is a relic.

Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island

Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island, 2003–2005, LightJet print mounted to aluminum, h 4 3/4” x w 12 2/3” (image) h 7 3/16” x w 15 5/16” (framed)

Travel to the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily, the island of Lisca Bianca specifically, to find the character Anna who disappeared from Michelangelo Antonioni's film L'Avventura and accidentally go to the wrong island (Bottaro). Return a year later to the correct island.

2.35: 1

2.35: 1, 2005, Marine fir plywood, PVC, h 48” x w 30” x d 70.5”, destroyed (image: installation for Palimpsests at Gigantic ArtSpace, New York, NY)

The title 2.35: 1 refers to the proportions of a motion picture screen's width as compared to its height. The aspect ratio of 2.35:1, or widescreen, allows for extraordinary formal dynamism and is the ratio often used for epic films. One might then say that despite its modest size, this is in fact a grand sculpture, as its footprint is precisely 2.35:1. The sculpture transitions from floor, to ramp, to stairs, to ladder, to the vertical portion of a skateboard ramp, continually increasing tension and mirroring the dramatic progression of events in epic films.

Special thanks to Eric Zeszotarski of Solid Studio

Phantom/Fountain

Phantom/Fountain, 2004, video, black and white, sound, total running time 1 minute and 49 seconds, Sculpture Center basement hallway, LIC, NY (four video stills)

Phantom/Fountain is a 1 minute 49 second film of mouthfuls of water being repeatedly spat at a video camera held at arm’s length in a morgue. Although the video is noticeably dark and empty, the space was active during the day. The video was made during the time in-between numerous autopsies. Phantom/Fountain records the raw sound of the incessant discharge; furthermore, it is a record of the gradual breakdown of the video camera itself, first with the failure of the microphone, then the auto-focus, and eventually the entire camera.

“Picking up where Bruce Nauman’s Self Portrait as a Fountain (1966) left off and following its art historical concerns and references, Apicella-Hitchcock creates a formal abstraction of shape, trajectory, and framing that also accentuates a psychological discomfort with a physical proximity to death.” – Anthony Huberman, Sculpture Center

Desire Lines

Desire Lines, 2005, video, sound, total running time 6 minutes and 17 seconds, (image: installation for Palimpsests at Gigantic ArtSpace, New York, NY), special thanks to Tom Kehn

Desire Lines is comprised of the scrolling end credits from films in the artist’s collection. The footage is sped up tremendously, diminishing legibility and highlighting the fact that despite the various movie genres, the films all adhere to a specific structural logic. The title of this piece refers to the landscape architecture term "desire lines" where the placement of concrete sidewalks is established by the organic paths worn into the landscape by foot traffic.

Ritorno a Lisca Bianca

Ritorno a Lisca Bianca, 2003–2005, video, black and white, sound, total running time 2 minutes and 30 seconds, looped

Travel to the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily, the island of Lisca Bianca specifically, to find the character Anna who disappeared from Michelangelo Antonioni's film L'Avventura and accidentally go to the wrong island (Bottaro). Return a year later to the correct island and swim ashore with a video camera in a plastic garbage bag, only to find nothing of interest except for red ants attacking black, shiny beetles. The film is comprised of five simultaneously running vignettes detailing the stages of the journey; however, synchronized audio is only available for each vignette for 30 seconds out of the film’s 2 minute and 30 second total. The film's audio shifts one vignette to the right every 30 seconds, traveling across the film and mirroring the journey itself. The soundtrack is in part constructed from video camera recordings while accidentally left on inside of the garbage bag.

Tracking

Tracking, 2005, film, black and white, silent, total running time 18 seconds (left film) and 11 seconds (right film), presented as two nonsynchronous DVDs, looped

Two black and white Super-8 films are presented side by side in Tracking, the left film looking down, the right film looking up. The footage was shot on two consecutive passes while walking a long hallway in a Medical Examiners office. The films are slightly different in both length and speed, consequently allowing the top and bottom portion of the human body to fall in and out of step with one another. The title Tracking potentially refers to the process of following someone’s trail and/or the leaking of current between two insulated points.

Desire Line

Desire Line, 2005, C-print mounted to Sintra and Plexiglas, h 70.5” x w 3” (right image: detailed enlargement)

Desire Line presents the entire cast and crew of a single movie on one vertical support the precise height of the artist. As with the companion video Desire Lines, the title of this piece refers to the landscape architecture term of the same name where the placement of concrete sidewalks is established by the organic paths worn into the landscape by foot traffic.