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
