Current Details, 2003, 4:48 minutes
Excerpt from One same, same thing, 2003, 7:20min
The video One same, same thing documents a performance carried out in a solitary location. The performed action suggests a real event that is not easily described. It is hard for viewers to perform as witnesses, even with the evidence of the recorded image. Logic, intuition, memory and observation seem insufficient tools to draw out what might be taking place. Like trauma and grief, this image is not easily opened by language nor open to language.
Current Details is a series of short, video compositions using footage I have collected over the past 30 years in my Competence Archive. The compositions use performed action and found action to mutually “caption” each other.
In the installation treatment of One same, same thing, Current Details is shown in four segments, on four, aluminum-framed, miniature LCD screens set into a rough wall. Built from drywall and lumber, this construction positions viewers on the opposite side of a finished wall that bisects the exhibition space, sealing off the space behind it.
A fifth aluminum frame at the wall’s centre point holds nothing but the view, for a single viewer, into a dark space behind the wall construction, where the video One same, same thing is projected on the far wall.
Installation views are from the exhibition One same, same thing, Galerie Dazibao, Montreal, 2003.