A Family of Performing Pictures (2004-06)

Postures incorporated in the pictorial setting are part of the performative picture-spectator-event. Men that fall, women that turn and children that slide away – quirky movements, then the re framing and as if they were mechanical toys or figurines, falling, turning and sliding inevitably executed. Men and women are captives in single screens, trapped. Children are elusive as they slide away.

A Family of Performing Pictures is an artistic exploration of possibilities offered by parallel and multi-monitor movie montage and real-time responsiveness with video footage.
Following representational ideas around cinematic expression, A Family of Performing Pictures work with responsiveness in moving imagery in conjunction to seamless assembly of video clips in parallel and in series in order to invoke ‘realistic’ depiction of scenes that are ‘magically’ influenced by the viewer. User inter(re)actions are set in relation to stories that consist of discrete gestures of on-screen characters in a state of waiting.

Imagery of fellow man and woman – as idolized through screens, canned slices of time and space, untouchable, evasive, never present as such. While trying to bridge the gap between image (the idol) and touch (sensitivity), the practitioner will account for the type of work that has to be performed in order to make men fall, women turn and children to disappear.

The do-it-yourself approach to perfectly useless but functional media artifacts is performed by all interested parties as a silently instructive piece for intermediary enthusiasts. To do one’s own interpretation of reality (using whatever means necessary) is ultimately an issue of style. Both man and woman are ghosts of past considerations – reduced to function without ANY purpose. Children avoid such confines. All gender aspects are purely coincidental and part of an aesthetic orchestration filtered through direct personal experience.

The role of the camera in A Family of Performing Pictures is to let us into this world, give us a distinct close-up of human behavior offering navigation through full motion video material. It is set at the disposal of the viewer to move along a predefined path and thus invoke activity by the very attention he/she gives to different characters.

The “Family“ works with large screens and sensors and consists of three members (or separate works): Men That Fall, Women That Turn and Where are the kids? And…what where they doing there? All three works comment issues about proximity in both time and space. The increasing convergence of media throughout different channels of display is investigated by the interpretation of media-artifacts as distinct objects. As such the ubiquitous presence (as well as the resulting transparency) of media is broken/disenchanted and the viewer relates to media as an object; clearly defined in time and space as well as the object in itself being the carrier of intentional closure.

Film or photography?

A Family of Performing Pictures challenges the boundaries of film and photography. The act of waiting and other repetitive endeavors is depicted through video loops, whereas the actor lends a fixed posture of himself/herself that consists of a series of still images played in sequence over and over again. The video loop captures a solid (albeit moving) corporal state and as such the image can be watched from a distance, it can be examined - there is a certain resting in a pose that separates itself from the opera-like orchestration of constantly movingforwardimagery in film/cinema where the director of a movie has total control of the length of each series of images.

Imagine the single eye that rapidly scans a picture surface in search for meaning, hunting down clues about the relevance of the depicted subject matter. There is a give and take between picture and spectator; a picture-spectator encounter – together they compose the picture as a performative event. The movement of the eye can express different sentiments, that of boredom or great interest, that of skepticism or bewildered enthusiasm – it is all measured in those little vibrations of the eye.

A Family of Performing Pictures takes the entire body into account. The posture of the filmed characters are provoking in their stillness; as I approach there is a certain shift between me as a spectator and the picture of a man standing and minding his on business. He looks at me. I approach even more, he falls. When I sit down on a chair a woman with her back turned towards me will shrug, when I leave she turns. When I elevate myself to see the child, the little boy will slide away to the next screen.

The work comment issues about proximity in both time and space. The increasing convergence of media throughout different channels of display is investigated by the interpretation of media-artifacts as distinct objects. As such the ubiquitous presence (as well as the resulting transparency) of media is broken/disenchanted and the viewer relates to media as an object; clearly defined in time and space as well as the object in itself being the carrier of intentional closure.

Separate family members have been installed in shopping malls as well as galleries and other public spaces.

The Family of Performing Pictures come in different shapes, such as screens attached to walls or boxes standing on their own on the floor as well as monitors put on shelves. We use old fashioned Belarusian TV-sets as well as modern, discrete flat screens – all depending on the setting and background. In spring 2006, the family will be brought together for the first time.