Erik Wesselo

April 26, 2008 at 6:00 pm

Erik Wesselo (1964 ’s-Hertogenbosch Netherlands) makes films that are marked by a clear beginning and end, but in between everything stays the same. Wesselo uses film, the medium of the moving image to bring time to a standstill. For the duration of the film he tries to capture the viewer with this one image. He uses the camera as a parallel to his psychological experience. The tragic moments in the films coalesce with their liberating potential.

The following is the program for Wesselo’s presentation:

Introduction.

Backward (1997 16 mm 5.00 min color sound) is an extremely physical film where the artist is riding on a galloping horse back to front exploring his relation with the environment.

In Luxembourg (1997 16 mm 3.35 min color sound) we see the smartly dressed artist as the bored caretaker of an empty, wealthy home where he walks from room to room. When he leans on the balcony a reverse zoom reveals the outside of the house, then the fact that it is surrounded by a gang of bikers. In a reference to Easy rider and it’s ideal, the freedom of the open road, the bikers come a cross here as a mental projection.

Wesselo’s Düffels Möll (1997 16 mm 5.00 min color mute) begins in medias res Wesselo is bound to the sail of a windmill rotating swiftly counterclockwise. By binding himself to the blade of the windmill, the artist is simultaneously empowered and powerless. Flying through the air at great heights he experiences the rush of being able to survey his surroundings from a new perspective.

Break.

Oil (2000 16 mm 30.00 min) records a performance event in which the artist and a co-worker are engaged in a monotonous and backbreaking task of loading a shipping container with boxes of oil. The film begins with an empty container and ends when the containers is full and the “actors” no longer have a performance space.

Break.

In Battery Park City (2006 two channel video projection 7.00 min color sound) Wesselo himself does not appear unlike the other films where he uses performances to explore structurally his relationship with the environment. In Battery Park City we see the camera exploring and investigating the landscape of lower Manhattan after the event of 9/11.

End.

This exhibition is made possible in part with support from the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam, the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and basjanader.com.

architecture, camera, events, landscape, lecture, performance, photography, screening, sports, video | Comments Off

Screenings and Photo Session

September 15, 2007 at 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm

Airbrushing history

“Airbrushing history” is an interesting concept, particularly when applied to satellite imaging. I know it’s foolish to suggest that satellite photography makes claims toward authenticity and thruthfulness that regular old SLR photography can’t, but how often do we think about the man behind the satellite camera? Usually only when areas of the map are “blacked out,” censored by some political agenda.

How long will it be before there are hundreds of commercial competitors to Google Maps, all with their own ideologies and manipulations of history. A map that returns Europe to a glacier. One that shows every point on Earth during its most violent. Maybe a low budget map made of images stitched together from photos taken during cloudy weather, nothing but shades of grey.

Of course the giant, high resolution satellite map is a fiction. It’s never really even existed - it’s stored in pieces, only displayed in parts, and made by tiny satellites cutting razor’s edges over the Earth’s surface that add up over time to some simulation of a flattened map. It all reminds me of a story I heard about the very first “satellite photos” which were taken with regular old SLR cameras pointed out of the window of those rickety old 1960’s spaceships.

Google, the ubiquitous internet search business, has been asked by a US congressional committee why it was “airbrushing history” by replacing post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery on its map portal with images of the region as it existed before the storm destroyed neighbourhoods, uprooted trees and smashed bridges.

So far, it’s unclear why the images were changed. Chikai Ohazama, who runs Google Earth, said governments often ask Google - whose corporate motto is “do no evil” - to change its imagery, but New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin says it had no hand in the matter.

From Google Wipes Katrina off the Map

camera, censorship, landscape, perception, photography, remake | No Comments »

Some re-enaction links

http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/?39901
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/03/19/18379446.php
http://homepages.tesco.net/~theatre/tezzaland/webstuff/storming.html
http://www.artangel.org.uk/pages/past/01/01_deller.htm
http://www.rosamundfelsen.com/articles.php?artist_id=9
http://www.shaze.info/projects.html

Utopian, media, paranoia, photography, remake | Comments Off

Davis & Davis - 1 Year Later

April 16, 2005 6:00 pm to May 20, 2005

1 YEAR LATER is a multi-media installation conflating Robert Frank’s “Covered Car, Long Beach, CA,” Johnny Cash and Men in Black.

This project originated from a parking shortage on the Los Angeles street where artist team, Denise and Scott Davis live. In trying to preserve a parking space to return home to each day, they came up with the idea of a collapsible covered car and for inspiration, turned to Robert Frank’s 1956 photograph to create this decoy. Research into late 50’s Cadillacs led to some of the iconic figures of the time: Men in Black, who drove them; then to Johnny Cash,who drove them, sang about them and was popularly known as the Man in Black.

For this bold installation, a one-to-one scale representation of Frank’s photograph, Davis & Davis jump “one year later” in time to inhabit the scene with these characters. A 1957 model Cadillac decoy is parked and three Men in Black sit within literally undercover, but their logo, the all-seeing eye, is visible in the driver’s side rear window. They are whispering along robotically to Cash’s 1957 release, “Cry, Cry, Cry” , the lyrics to which speak of surveillance, interrogation and threat, hallmarks of Cold War domestic intelligence operations.

This collage of time, space and representational mediums creates a filmic transformation of the original starting point, this 50’s photographic scene, with an uncanny contemporary reflection.

Exhibited at TELIC in collaboration with The Center for Integrated Media at the California Institute for the Arts.

events, interaction, photography, remake, sound | Comments Off