CatharineClarkGallery

Foobel (An Alternative History) (2005)

This animated stop-motion video was made in direct response to social and political arguments over the construction of new sports stadiums, both in the US and UK. Though inspired by the somewhat ill-conceived plan to build a new JETS football arena on the west side of Manhattan, this video refers more directly to the English game of football, creating a brief, absurd history of the evolvement of the stadium from playing surface to ‘Babel-esque’ monstrosity. It is a satire of the need for bigger and bigger stages of any popular type of theatre at the expense of everything else. It conflates the greed and absurdity of the issues with the thrill of the game and the epic religiosity associated with it.

Metropolis (2008) is a very abridged narrative history of the city of Charlotte, North Carolina.   The video uses stop motion video animation to physically manipulate aerial still images of the city (both real and fictional), creating a landscape in constant motion.  Starting around 1755, viewers witness the building of the first house in Charlotte along a Native American trading path.  From there, one sees the town develop through the historic dismissal of the English, to the prosperity made by the discovery of gold and the subsequent genesis of the multitude of churches the city is now famous for.  The landscape turns white with cotton, and the modern city is ‘born’, with a more detailed re-creation of the economic boom, and surprising architectural transformation, that has occurred in the past twenty years.

Charlotte is one of the fastest growing cities in the country, primarily due to the influx of the banking community. The result: an unusually rapid architectural and population expansion. This new downtown Metropolis, however, is therefore subject to the whim of the market and the interest of the giant corporations that choose to do business there.  Made entirely from images printed on paper, the animation represents a sped-up urban planner’s dream, but suggests the frailty of that dream, however concrete it may feel on the ground today.  Ultimately the video continues the city’s development into an imagined hubristic future, with more and more skyscrapers and sports arenas—and bleak environmental decay.  It is an extreme representation of the already serious water shortages that face many expanding American cities today.  Though a warning, the work is as much as a statement of our paper thin significance.  No matter how many monuments of steel, glass and concrete we build, humans have limited gravity compared to the powers of nature.

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.

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.  

 *Email [email protected] for a private viewing link

On the morning of September 21, 2014, LigoranoReese installed a 3,000-pound ice sculpture of the words "The Future" at the intersection of Broadway and 23rd Streets at Flat Iron North Plazain New York City. This public art work coincided with the U.N.Climate Summit and the People's Climate March--underscoring the necessity for immediate action to confront global warming.  The ice sculpture, which originally measured 21 feet wide and 5 feet tall, eventually melted away. During this process, LigoranoReese photographed and film the installation’s disappearance, posting it on the internet in real-time. The event combined many forms: sculpture, installation, performance, and internet media event.  Dawn of the Anthropocene was so named to describe the effect of humanity on the Earth’s systems. The term comes from Nobel prize scientist Paul Crutzen.  In his and other scientists’ view, humanity has entered an age when the power and impact of humans is as great, if not greater, than nature’s.

On the morning of September 21, 2014, LigoranoReese installed a 3,000-pound ice sculpture of the words THE FUTURE at the intersection of Broadway and 23rd Streets at Flat Iron North Plaza in New York City. This public art work coincided with the U.N. Climate Summit and the People's Climate March--underscoring the necessity for immediate action to confront global warming.  The ice sculpture, which originally measured 21 feet wide and 5 feet tall, eventually melted away. During this process, LigoranoReese photographed and filmed the installation’s disappearance, posting it on the internet in real-time. The event combined many forms: sculpture, installation, performance, and internet media event.  Dawn of the Anthropocene was so named to describe the effect of humanity on the Earth’s systems. The term comes from Nobel prize scientist Paul Crutzen.  In his and other scientists’ view, humanity has entered an age when the power and impact of humans is as great, if not greater, than nature’s.

Night Hunter (2011), incorporates images of Lillian Gish taken from silent-era, live-action cinema. The narraitve unfolds intuitively, and reveals itself in the process of construction. To produce the film, Steers generated over 4,000 paper collages which combine fragments of 19th century illustrations with images from four silent-era moving pictures. Steers’ process is painstaking and meticulous—Night Hunter took over four years to make, with approximately eight collages required to produce a single second of film time. In some instances, Gish is cut out of specific scenes and reconfigured in collage environments, while collage materials are applied directly to printed film frames in others. The subsequent fluidity becomes a critical element in the texture of the film, and the identity of the principal character. Transitions, both biological and metaphorical, are central themes. The collages were photographed in 35mm on an Oxberry animation stand. Larry Polansky composed the music and sound elements.

"For my film Night Hunter, I was looking for a character with strong emotional resonance and decided to take the preeminent actress Lillian Gish out of scenes from her early silent-era films and re-contextualize her actions. Her work in those films is deeply compelling. She has an evocative presence and vast range and depth of feeling in her performances. I combined her images with fragments of 19th century illustrations, primarily from the work of Pre-Raphaelite artists." - Stacey Steers

Steers’ film Phantom Canyon (2006), is an exploration of memories, a reflection on a pivotal journey taken many years ago, and a surreal circumnavigation of that experience. Collages composing this film incorporate photocopied elements from 18th and 19th century engravings with figures from Eadweard Muybridge’s Human and Animal Locomotion, first published in 1887.  The Muybridge figures were recombined to create the movements necessary for the narrative flow of the film.

"In 2001, I was searching for a new way of working with materials and I chanced upon a collage technique where I incorporated antique photographic materials and clip art (originally Eadweard Muybridge's human motion studies from 1887) for the film Phantom Canyon. Historic materials carry a certain nostalgic resonance for me that evokes a timeless quality, and I like the neutrality of the found image.

In Phantom Canyon, I started creating collage sequences and decided not to think at all about subject or developing a narrative direction. I was just exploring the technique. About a third of the way into the film I began to see the images and events I was working with had some relationship to an early pivotal trip I had take to Latin American where I had married a young Venezuelan and had a child. Metaphorically, memories of that time were being expressed through me in the collage process. Once I recognized this, I began to allow that inclination to drive the film." - Stacey Steers