Feverous Transgression
The work alludes to a history of the moving image, particularly those circular pre-filmdevices like the zoetrope. On the screen, video collages are constructed and deconstructed, referencing a history of the carnivalesque, early film and animation, drawing on theories posited by Mikhail Bakhtin. Interactive digital software triggers shifts in the animation and the audio composition. As viewers gather before the moving image, the gentle dance of imagery grows feverish and liberated, transgressive and radical, as Bahktin imagines the carnival. The audio collage – consisting of carnival stems, digital synthesizers, and found sounds – swells correspondingly, moving across
the speakers as viewers gather. Video clips race around the curved screen, an accelerated animation, until we are bathed in flashes of light. The meaning of the image, of the waltz, of the machine is lost; instead, it means everything that we are standing together in front of it.
Documentation from Inlight Richmond, 2017.
Mark Baker, Chalet Comellas, Clinton Sleeper.