<-- SPIDER & MOUSE Gallery February-April 2002
gallery SpiderandMouse
International video performance program
21.02.02 -15.03.02
Andrey Suzdalev.
“Transition across the winter stream”
two monitors installation
28.03.02 -12.04/02
Sirpa Jokinen
two monitors installation
Gillian McIver
EUROPA:
Four days in Berlin
performer Luc Boisclair
videofilm
....04.02 -...04.02
Natalia Maly
performers: Andrey and Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov
three monitors installation
The theme of the program is video performance art language: between subject and object (or analogue and digital).
From the point of view of the inner senses, all works are in some way connected with eternal movement and research of personal and cultural memory.
"Transition across the winter stream" by Andrey Suzdalev is a video part of his project "Transition" in which Suzdalev is looking upon classical European culture from the position of old Chinese culture, across the mirror of regular park (the title of the work is a sentence from «Dao de Dzin») . His video installation, consists of two monitors connected by glass road. The author is walking along the regular park road with two cameras: looking forward and looking backward and we can feel the tracking of his steps but never see performer-camera men himself. He uses unedited analogue video.
This work has many connotations with "Stairs" by Sirpa Jokinen. In this work, both performer and camera are moving together and we see the endless way of personal subjective body in some abstract and objective space. In this case the role of video is to be a part of the performer's body, across which it is possible to send to the spectator a sense of touch of the ground or «spirits of the past linger on stairs». Sirpa Jokinen’s "Stairs" and " EUROPA: Four days in Berlin" by Gillian McIver are exhibited together but are very different works in terms of their language; however, they have a crossing point: both works take a view from the NEW Continent to OLD Europe.
In its language, there are more connections between Gillian McIver’s "EUROPA: Four days in Berlin" and "Siziph’ work" by Natalia Maly. Here, video artists and performers are working in collaboration more similar to the relationship between actor and film director. Both video artists use digital effects in editing. In this case, during the filming, the performer beccomes an object for camera-witness, but after editing the result loses any traces of live action and we can see the language of the digital video itself. It is important to note that both these works, in which the author is not performer and which use digital techniques, are connected not with the personal, but historical and cultural mythology and memory.