URSULA SCHERRER
Glades
a video installation with text
glade - an open space in a forest
The video is projected with two projectors onto the ceiling. The image is covering the whole ceiling and is played back by two DVD players. The viewer is invited to lie on a carpeted floor. The text will be heard over headphones.
The text is comprised of one sentence of each e-mail I have received and that I have written between march 2006 and march 2007, played back in random sequence. I speak the text myself. I will record the text while walking through Milano like bits of thoughts that appear responding to a new place. The voice will be clear only sometimes hidden by the noise of the city.
Using the program MAX, each sentence will have it's own file. The computer will choose the files and their order. Therefore the sentences are taken out of the original context, being put back together completely randomly.
The video is of wind blowing through grain. The footage is abstracted by increasing the contrast and is layered in After Effects. It is projected onto the ceiling, which lets the viewer sink into the flow of the dialogue, into the sound of the voice, into the mesmerizing projection. The image is constantly moving, shifting in an ever changing dance of shadows and lights, rhythms and shapes. Breaking the image into layers gives it a twist, alters it from being straight forward into the mystery and wonder of the imaginary world, quite similarly as the text is disconnected from its original context, creating a new reality.
Glades is a very personal piece and I want to transform it from a personal to a universal level. I take a part of my life of one year out of context and therefore out of reality, extract the essence of it and create a never ending story, an ever changing dialogue with the one common denominator - me as the writer and the one written to - a story and stories out of a real story without ever disclosing its source.
Ursula Scherrer was born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland and has been living in New York City since 1988. She studied dance at the Theatertanzschule St. Gallen, Switzerland, before moving to New York City. She danced with several choreographers, as well as choreographing her own work. She started to photograph in 1993 and has shown her work in the U.S., Switzerland and Mexico. She won a Prize in the International Photography Contest of Austin, Texas.Created in 1996 in New York City together with Michael J. Schumacher Studio Five Beekman, a gallery specializing in sound and multi-media installations. In 1997, she began working with video. Her work has been shown at various venues, BAC 36th International Film and Video Festival, Dissonanze Festival, Rome/Italy, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn/USA, Strange Attractors II, 2nd International Festival of Experimental Intermedia Art, St. Paul/USA, 9e Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement, Saint-Gervais Geneve/Switzerland, Media Test Wall, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge/USA, Engine 27, New York City/USA, GAIe Gates etal., Brooklyn/USA, Red Room, Baltimore/USA, Experimental Intermedia Gent, Gent/Belgium, among others.
STATEMENT
I am attracted to what is fleeting, what can't be captured, what is past before it is even recognized. The viewer is placed into an intimate environment - what does she/he take with her/him?
And that in itself is always an interpretation of the actual.
My aesthetic training began with dance, transitioned to choreography and then photography. I found in the medium of video the possibility for synthesis of the moving body in space and imagery.
Coming from movement, stillness frightens me, but can be useful in contemplating or considering the fear of stillness, to create a moment out of which new movement can be born. I project my videos into landscapes, architecture, water, a ceiling, a window, snow, through a see-through fabric.
The situation becomes part of the video as much as the video part of the situation.
Or, free after Lengyel: It wasn't about the perfection of the harmony, but about the inner movement in view of the infinity outside of time. The intuitive realization of the fleeting of all reality led to look for that which was seemingly irreal.
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