"SLAVE"


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SLAVE, 2014
8 channel digital video installation
installation view

SLAVE

Work and Installation description

SLAVE is a digital video installation of projected experimental mobile phone films depicting and disfiguring eight of Dan Flavin's "monuments" for V. Tatlin.

The filming of the "monuments", in situ while they were on exhibition at the MUMOK in Vienna, involved hand-held digital video capture and a relatively static frame. It followed a plan -- each "monument" shot individually numerous times in certain ways over a period of few months at approximately the same distance from the gallery wall to maintain the sense of their relative sizes in relation to each other -- premised on their final configuration as a ensemble in a large multi-channel video installation.

For its inaugural exhibition in late 2014 at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, SLAVE was presented as a silent eight-channel production of synchronised large-scale projections. The eight vertical 16:9 format films, of, variously, 12 and 24 minutes in duration and looped, were shown on free-standing 4m x 2.25m x .1m screens in the gallery's large space (32m long: 6.35m wide x 6.9m high at the entrance end and 13.26m wide x 8.4m high at the other end).

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Video documentation tour: SLAVE, ACCA 2014

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SLAVE, 2014
8 channel digital video installation
installation view (same view, two moments)

The series of films in SLAVE numbers eight, with the potential for presentations of scaled-down configurations containing three or more films. As each film exists in relation to the others as part of a synchronised whole, the edit of each film changes depending on how many and which other filmed "monuments" comprise the exhibition suite. They are projection works, scalable depending on the space, with a minimum height in the vicinity of 3.2m and a maximum of approximately 4m. They can be presented in one large single space, as in Melbourne in 2014, or divided across multiple smaller interconnecting spaces.

The internal dynamic or 'beat' of the films, between the "monument" in its predominantly 'composed' state and its more occasional state of 'eruption', is more arrhythmic than not. This is also true of the interplay of the films together. There are, however, episodes within the sequencing when "monuments" 'erupt' simultaneously or where one 'eruption' appears to set others off, like a 'slave' unit. (Note: the choreographing of the piece is not structured around a grand climax of ignition or anything of that theatrical ilk).

The technical requirements of SLAVE are: a light-controlled exhibition environment; screens or prepared walls; native 16:9 1080p LED/laser projectors with portrait/vertical hang capability and installation flexibility controls; a matching number of network syncing media players (e.g. '220 Bright-sign' players) with cabling, SD cards etc; plus hanging poles/wall mounts.

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Video Interview, SLAVE, ACCA 2014

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SLAVE, 2014
8 channel digital video installation
installation view

SLAVE is one in an ongoing series of experimental camera-phone works that are, ostensibly, retakes of existing works of art: depictions at a slant -- part homage, part critique, part fan or foe's appropriation, part mimetic displacement, part re-mastering. This work represents a aspect of my film- and image-making that plays with, towards recasting, some of the conventions, apparatuses and composures that operate in the domains of reproduction. And, especially, how they apply to and are used in serving (up) the work of art.

For related work, see also this exhibition:

Bootleg, Breenspace, 2013

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Video documentation: SLAVE, ACCA 2014

Video documentation: SLAVE, ACCA 2014

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SLAVE, 2014
8 channel digital video installation
film stills

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