video projection

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2010

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THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US II

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Project infos

video projection, 6min in loop /
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
William Wordsworth (1807)
This post-Romantic video focuses on the conspicuous clash and the likely match between the world of man and the world of nature. As the opening black screen recedes, an elongated form fades in. After a few fleeting seconds we discern a high-rise building, or rather a somewhat weird, wafer-like ‘collage’ of several buildings. Then the camera lures the eye on a dizzying journey up to the structure’s towering height. Before we have even asked ourselves where we are headed, and before the ‘journey’ has come to an end, the ascent is abruptly interrupted by a horizontal black frame, which cuts right into the middle of the screen. Whilst this switch to the horizontal plane does relieve the vertigo of the vertical, it also adds to the viewer’s unease, because the clarity of form is displaced for a moment by the nothingness of the black color. The moment of relative comfort does not take long to come. Right at the centre of the screen, from left to right, a serene suburban landscape rushes in. This image, albeit rapidly moving out of sight, gives us a sense of returning to the world as we know it. We are in for another riddle, though. As two more bands of moving images appear on top and at the foot of the screen, our minds are compelled to interpret again. Why do these images decline to stop for us to have a good look at them? Are the images coming in or going out? What is their origin and what is their destination? Why does the same element show up in a different band before it fades out? How important is color to making sense of it all? Why does color have to wear off to a ghostly black and white? Are these images arranged in a particular pattern? Why is it that that urban and natural landscapes alternate without, apparently, much coherence? As our minds race to figure out a meaningful interpretation, we might end up thinking that the repetition of some déjà vu images, as well as the re-emergence of natural landscapes amongst the urban frames, should mean that a marriage between man and nature is still possible. This interpretation could be reinforced by the auditory background, which features a well balanced fusion of silence, bird chirps, frog calls, pattering raindrops, the soothing splash of ocean waves, the roar of car engines, the low-pitch whistle of a boat, and the piercing whine of ambulance sirens. We could be lulled into a false sense of intellectual security if it weren’t for the return of the wafer-like structure at the end of the clip. This time the eye frantically plummets down to the emptiness of the closing frame. Is this the black hole of a world that is too much with us?
Lubomir Terziev

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