CatharineClarkGallery

Sun City (2013) focuses attention on the town of Benidorm, Spain.  Out of all the transformations that the package holiday industry has made to the Mediterranean over the past fifty years, Benidorm represents a sea change: from sleepy fishing village to mini-Manhattan.  This extraordinary transformation forms the basis for this work, though the premise behind Benidorm’s growth is dramatically warped.  Sheltered by the mighty Puig Campana Mountain, Benidorm benefits from an extraordinary sun-rich microclimate.  The fantasy described is that the sun, not humankind, is responsible for the growth of the metropolis.  Through photographic reconstruction and collage of past and present imagery, the video suggests that people have been worshiping the sun in Beniform for thousands of years.  Stop motion animation describes the growth of the buildings as if they evolved like plants, grown by the sun itself.  Finally, this living town is transformed into something far more valuable than a tourist destination: a machine for harnessing the sun.  Benidorm is the ultimate solar power station, where energy value trumps that of beauty or pleasure.

For the first time in this series, Birk draws upon documents from across eras and continents to portray a subject which affects countries and populations spanning the globe: the laws which govern the seas.  The lighthouse in the drawing portrays the 200 word Preamble from the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS).  This document represents more than fourteen years of work and the cooperation of over 150 countries from all regions of the world, representing every political and legal system, and the spectrum of socioeconomic development.  UNCLOS defines the rights and responsibilities of nations with respect to their use of the world's oceans, establishing guidelines for businesses, the environment, and the management of marine natural resources.  The Convention, completed and opened for signature in 1982, replaced four 1958 treaties, and basically solidified long held, customary views of the uses of the sea.  UNCLOS entered into force in 1994, a year after Guyana became the 60th nation to sign the treaty.  Although the United States now recognizes UNCLOS as a codification of customary international law, it has yet to ratify it. 

Fittingly, the base of the lighthouse draws from two historically important texts which, to this day, form the basis for the creation and interpretation of international and maritime law.  The first text dating to the 17th century is by Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius.  Grotius's 1604 treatise, De Jure Praedae Commentarius (Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty) promoted the right of unobstructed navigation, and remains to this day one of the classic texts influencing the rule of law on the high seas.  Grotius’s book on international legal doctrine, Mare Liberum (1609) is generally recognized as a paramount element in the formulation and interpretation of contemporary international law.  The base of the lighthouse structure also contains a quote from President Woodrow Wilson’s speech “The Fourteen Points” given to the United States Congress in 1918, towards the end of World War I.  In it, he mentions (as point 2) that the seas must be free to all nations.  The “Fourteen Points” speech was the only explicit statement of war aims by any of the nations fighting in World War I, and eventually became the basis for the terms for Germany’s surrender at the end of the war. 

This video is an iteration of a 2015 public commission by Doyle at Wave Hill: A Public Garden and Cultural Center, in New York City.  His dramatic installation, The Lightening, a Project for Wave HIll's Aquatic Garden, was comissioned for Wave Hill's 50th Anniversary.  

Chris Doyle's videos explore the way that human anxieties and collective attitudes about the environment are projected through representations of landscape.

Under Pressure, the third lavatory music video in the Seat Assignment series, features the 1981 David Bowie/Freddie Mercury duet, "Under Pressure." The title alludes to the pressure to perform well, the pressure of time and the mandate to work quickly, the pressure of a small space to perform in, the psychological pressure on a traveler during a long flight, or even the pressurized air of the cabin. The song follows a musical arc that moves from constraint to an overflowing of emotion back to constraint, and the performance here aims to follow a similar trajectory.

Improvising with materials close at hand, the series Seat Assignment consists of photographs, video, and digital images all made while in flight using only a camera phone. The project began spontaneously on a flight in March 2010 and is ongoing. At present, over 2500 photographs and video, made on more than 70 different flights to date, constitute the raw material of the project.  Katchadourian's videos from Seat Assignment are not available for viewing online--exhibition venues and art fairs provide the rare chance to view Katchadourian's videos from this series.  

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