Tag: blue

“’Vespers Pool’ continues Schneemann’s dissolution of imagistic and technological boundaries. Relying on dreams and signs, the work moves between conscious and unconscious worlds, melding realms that are commonly kept apart. This six-channel video installation fractures distinctions between human and animal, reason and the irrational, even between life and death. (Some of this text is from Eleanor Heartney.)

Vesper was suffering from a vascular disease which thinned veins in his neck so that when he sneezed or moved suddenly there were splashes of blood. Vesper always slept close in to my body. One morning I woke up and saw that his blood had splattered my only good nightgown (coincidentally, it belonged to the brand of cotton clothing, Cornell). I took the splotched nightgown to the sink to wash it out and I was suddenly commanded “Stop! Don’t wash this! Wrap this in tissue, in a safe place.” This was my first indication that there might be a work of artifacts tracing Vesper’s illness.

“Vespers Pool” is preceded by a corridor lined with illuminated niches that contain artifacts—a dead dove, a bloody nightgown, a deer tail, splintered wood from a tree struck by lightning—lit within the facade. These artifacts, presented as rare objects, while of no explicit value, point to a set of coincidences, to paranormal events centered on a death.

Schneemann advances her work in reconstituting psychic spaces as part of ordinary phenomena. The installation raises questions of interspecies communication, deepened by the wall of artifactual coincidences, as well as suggesting unexpected cultural taboos.

Entering the darkened gallery, viewers see seven video projections in a stream of images of a cat (Vesper) ardently kissing a woman; these images flow vertically into a projected pool of water. Schneemann spontaneously photographed the continuously kissing faces—human and animal—over an eight-year period. Questions of interspecies communication are deepened by the wall of artifactual coincidences, as well as suggesting unexpected cultural taboos.

“Vespers Pool” (1999 – 2000) includes six LCD projectors, two slide projectors, and motorized mirrors; a blue wall (8 × 15 × 14˝, with illuminated niches enclosing found objects. Four video projectors cast images down the walls, onto the ceiling and onto a circle of sand on the floor. Two other video projectors cantilever enlarged video loops side-by-side, detailing six-second sequences of the life and death of a companion cat. Edited on a Media 100 system, a multiple channel audial track layers ordinary sounds into a disquieting surround.

—Brooklyn Rail

Presented for the first time at Sala Montcada, Fundació “la Caixa”, in the season “El yo diverso” (The diverse I), this small format, right-angled video projection relates to two other pieces: two photographs that recall Goya’s duel with clubs and a sculpture with silhouettes joined at the waist. The description of the video is as follows: two hands are digging out two holes in the ground and then covering them over, each hand using the earth dug out by the other. That enigmatic action is very beautiful and open to different interpretations. One of them is linked to one of the basic concerns of Cabello and Carceller’s career: working together, living together, thinking together; that could be symbolised by the figure of the couple, which was also the nexus of the three visions shown at Sala Montcada in Barcelona. The fiction the artists narrate revolves openly around the way we construct ourselves and the way we are constructed. The hands that appear in the projection are immersed in that task. First, they mark out the territory, then they dig out the earth, they finish the process and start all over again. But there is something curious here, which would tend to confirm what we have said. It seems that everything returns to what it was before, but the earth has changed place and, if we keep on with this continuous task, it will change places over and over again. Every action has its consequences, and all the more so if it is on our immediate environment. The earth could symbolise the most elemental raw material -what we are, our first feelings-, which we act on and on which the nearest person deposits the result of her actions. In that way, like most of Cabello and Carceller’s works, the video talks about team work and communal living. Another aspect we should point out is the character of this work in relation to other videos. So, as in the earlier Un beso (A kiss, 1995-1996) or Bollos (Dykes, 1996), this work is characterised by visual and temporal economy. They all show short, concise, and simple, actions, but open to interpretations. That is something both creators have continued in later works on the same support: Una habitación doble (A double room, 1998), Sin título (promesa) (Untitled, promise, 1998) and Sin título (viaje) (Untitled, journey, 1999).Juan Antonio Álvarez Reyes