Showing posts with label installation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label installation. Show all posts

A Triangulation (Japan)





A Triangulation (Japan), 2006, MDF, paint, c-print mounted to aluminum, video, written text, Queens Museum of Art, southeast ramp, Flushing, NY. Sculpture: h 91.5” x w 46.125” x d 46.125,” destroyed, image: h 6.57” x w 9.1,” video: color, sound, total running time 30 seconds, looped. Writing: tri-fold printed handout.

Special thanks to Eric Zeszotarski of Solid Studio.

(Foreword and first entry from ten field reports)

Subject: Foreword
Date: June 19, 2005 9:32:03 PM Japan Standard Time

I was initially pleased upon seeing Cinderella Castle in Tokyo Disneyland at the Tokyo Disney Resort in Japan. Its duplication of Cinderella Castle in The Magic Kingdom at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida was precise to the smallest detail and seeing it was like reuniting with a long-standing friend. Still, in short order the comforting familiarity was replaced by mounting anxiety and a vague sense of dread. Yes, there was an abundance of grey stone, gold trim and royal blue in the rooftop shingles. Yes, the trickery of forced architecture operated in the same manner as its companion in the United States, yet something far more powerful and inexplicable was at work than simple perspective deception. Seeing this building replicated accurately in another country had the consequence of destabilizing my sense of orientation. Somehow this doppelgänger, because of its stubborn, insistent sameness, operated effectively in inverting everything that surrounded it. This baffles me.

I understand how Cinderella Castle’s combination of architectural styles taken from various castles and chateaus in Europe is not terribly odd in and of itself, since the Disney “Imagineers” wanted their castle to be as genuine as possible; all the same, seeing this building exported from France, to Florida, then on to Japan creates a double displacement of an uncanny nature and merits closer investigation. I intend on exploring this predicament of authenticity further during a fact-finding mission to Florida that will be unified with my explorations from Japan. Understanding how the Castle compromised my sense of grounding is of primary importance, particularly as I am a simultaneous critic and fan of “The Happiest Place on Earth.”

442 days later…

Subject: The Happiest Place on Earth 1
Date: September 4, 2006 11:30:21 AM Eastern Daylight Time

So, I am 100 feet inside the park sitting on the steps of City Hall looking around. The train at the Walt Disney World Railway just gave several quick toots and an "all aboard," another group is off on a circumnavigation of the park. The familiar smells of popcorn and vanilla float on the breeze and the Main Street Transportation Company just pulled up, its clip clopping barely audible above the sound of the band bouncing through a homecoming march; even so, I must say that I am a bit on edge because in addition to presenting my ticket at the gate only moments ago, I was also asked to present my index finger for a fingerprint scan. This is the beginning.

Seeking to understand the disorienting effect of the Cinderella Castle at the Tokyo Disney Resort in Japan, Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock subjects its image (and those of its twin at the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, FL) to some forms of displacement reciprocity. In a spare installation, a looping video captures the Tokyo Disney Castle on a cloudy day spinning around the edge of the screen. Near the video, a simplified silhouette of the castle, bisected by its copy, hangs upside down from the ceiling like a stalactite. A third element, a photograph from Orlando’s Disney Resort, further complicates the entertainment franchise’s aggressive innocence and its disorienting duplications. – Herb Tam, Associate Curator, Queens Museum of Art.

Geegaw + Scientifikk = Logikkal Trifle?




Geegaw + Scientifikk = Logikkal Trifle?, 1999, video, black & white, silent, total running time 4 seconds, looped, assorted materials, l 20’ x w 80’ (top image: 8 photographs in sequence utilized for pinhole video. bottom image: installation view of Geegaw + Scientifikk = Logikkal Trifle? for Ruins in Reverse, CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, NY)

In this show the photographic act is paired down to its bare minimum with the entire show functioning as an exploded view of all the factors that come into play to make a single photographically generated, animated image. In December 1998, the two artists began a three-day trip to make a simple, animated loop of a yet unknown object in the State of New York Medical Examiners office in Buffalo. Over the next three days, the artists traveled from New York City’s Pennsylvania Station to Buffalo, NY, researched within the medical examiners office, and made the eight pinhole photographs that would comprise the final animation. The animation is comprised of 8 black & white images circling a ceiling mounted video camera in the room where autopsies take place. The video camera sends a live feed of the deceased from the autopsy room to a separate room where body identification takes place.

All objects that were utilized in the preparation and production of the animation were collected and stored into an ever-increasing number of trash bags. Weeks after the initial production of the images the bags were brought into the clinical workspace of the gallery, whereupon, employing subjective memory and pseudo-scientific cataloging practices, the artifacts – ranging from ticket stubs and food wrappers, to duct tape and clothing worn during production – were organized with the goal of reconstructing the original narrative. The resultant display takes on the logical form of a timeline, or wake of a ship leading up to the creation of the animation; however, branching out from this sequence are the tangents, digressions, and embellishments that occur when theory, memory, and history merge. This project is a collaboration with Brian McClave.

A Methodical Elimination of Drudgery; Crude, but Adequate



A Methodical Elimination of Drudgery; Crude, but Adequate, 1996, room 1: washing machine, shelf, fluorescent light, audio #1 total running time 3 minutes and 38 seconds, looped; room 2: distillation system, 2 buckets, dirty clothes, shelf, Polaroids, specimen containers, forms, audio #2 total running time 3 minutes and 25 seconds, looped, w 25’ x d 15’ (installation detail)

This exhibition examines a procedure in its entirety. The first room of A Methodical Elimination of Drudgery; Crude, but Adequate contains an abandoned washing machine that has been clinically dismantled piece by piece. The machine is displayed in its sum; each fragment carefully arranged on a shelf running the perimeter of the room. Accompanying each element from the washer is an identifying time-coded placard indicating the moment at which that individual piece was removed from the whole machine. The room is cold and empty, aside from the disassembled parts and a fluorescent light. A poignant country song repeats endlessly at a low volume (Making Plans, from Trio, 1987, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt, written by Johnny Russell/Voni Morrison).

The second room contains an elaborate and theatrical distillation system that extracts dirt from the artist’s clothes worn during the production and upkeep of the exhibition. The results are recorded and cataloged each day. Shelves hold sample jars containing dirty laundry water, the clean water that was generated, residual dirt, and Polaroids of the clothing worn. An exaggerated soundtrack of boiling and bubbling (blowing through a straw into a cup of water) pervades the room. This project is a collaboration with Brian McClave.

Making Plans, total running time 3 minutes and 38 seconds, from Trio, 1987, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt, written by Johnny Russell/Voni Morrison:

You say tomorrow you're going
It's so hard for me to believe
I'm making plans for the heartaches
'Cause you're making plans to leave
The tears for me will be falling
Like a tree shedding its leaves
I'm making plans for the teardrops
'Cause you're making plans to leave
You're making plans to forget me
I'm making plans to miss you
I'm getting ready to grieve
I'm making plans to be lonesome
'Cause you're making plans to leave
I'm making plans to be lonesome
'Cause you're making plans to leave