EDITORIAL - Still Moving
By Cheryl Simon
The photo-based installation projects featured in this special issue of Ciel variable exhibit a paradoxical sense of temporality. Although all are presented as time-based installations, hence moving imagery, the prevailing temporal logic characterizing this body of work is that of stillness. For this reason, the temporal sensibility here is more akin to that generally attributed to photography.
PORTFOLIO - Adad Hannah, Surface Tension
On the very threshold of immobility, Adad Hannah’s works are initially interpreted by our eyes as being static images – only to eventually reveal subtle movements that betray their nature as works of video rather than of still photography.
Adad Hannah: Struggling Against Time
Adad Hannah’s Stills are described on the artist’s Web site as “real time video projected tableaux vivants.”1 The three couplets within that description each evoke distinct histories and complexes of artistic concerns.
PORTFOLIO - Fiona Tan, Déprises identitaires
This article was originally published only in French. No translation is available.
En compilant des images du début du cinéma qui présentent des corps étrangement figés devant l’objectif, Fiona Tan investit une zone grise entre le film et la photographie.
L’emploi du temps : travail et désœuvrement dans Countenance de Fiona Tan
This article was originally published only in French. No translation is available. – Read the Abstract
Dans la monobande Facing Forward (1998-1999) ou l’installation Thin Cities (1999-2000), Fiona Tan compile des segments de films tournés dans les années 1910 et 1920 par les colonisateurs néerlandais montrant des sujets immobilisés devant le cinématographe comme s’ils posaient pour un photographe.
PORTFOLIO - Tetsuomi Anzai, Still Breathing
Each the product of a very particular combination of media generated imagery, Tetsuomi Anzai’s mixed media installation works offer unique perspectives on a world increasingly apprehended through pictures.
Time Travels: Mixed-Media Works by Tetsuomi Anzai
No one image can replace the intuition of duration, but many diverse images, borrowed from very diverse orders of things, may, by the convergence of their action, direct consciousness to the point where there is a certain intuition to be seized.
Henri Bergson1
PORTFOLIO - Stan Denniston, Time Passages
Using long, continuous video takes and the static camera position of the still photographer to capture what at first appears to be inert subject matter–geological formations, deserted highways and other abandoned sites—Stan Denniston’s ‘fixed focus’ movies invoke an uncanny temporal sensibility.
Stan Denniston: Stills
Normally, photographs and film/video engender different types of capture and different modes of reception from one another. Stan Denniston came to a juncture in his practice where he wanted to explore a boundary zone between these genres.
From as far as hope
To continue my play between the still and moving image, I sought a subject that would remain “still” even though the camera was highly mobile. I settled on the vanishing point.
PORTFOLIO - David Claerbout, Moments réflexifs
This article was originally published only in French. No translation is available.
Chevauchant la photographie et l’image en mouvement, les œuvres de David Claerbout évoquent les frictions étymologiques et perceptives qui se sont développées entre ces médiums.
David Claerbout : le spectre du temps
This article was originally published only in French. No translation is available. – Read the Abstract
L’image photographique est pleine, bondée : pas de place, on ne peut rien y ajouter. Au cinéma, dont le matériel est photographique, la photo n’a pourtant pas cette complétude (et c’est heureux pour lui).
Life on the Edge of Perception: Immobility in Recent Video Installations
Frame-by-frame analysis confirms that beneath the apparent non-movement of the plant world, the most awful and violent things are brewing: heart-rending torsions, horrible intertwinings, endless growth . . . such is Man.
