span, 2006
4 channel video installation and mobile video performance
SPAN GALLERY DOCUMENTATION shows the four channel video installation at inova [Milwaukee, WI] and samples of the video content.
SPAN REENACTMENT DOCUMENTATION shows truck looping between Museum and Port with live video mixing.
I have been fascinated by the manner and frequency with which threats to social and national security have been depicted in the news media as well as dramatized on television and film. The relationship between the factual and dramatic has become blurred as one feeds off the other. Specifically, I am interested in the recent media focus on ports as potential security risks. span draws attention to the Port of Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Art Museum, two sites of import and distribution in the city of Milwaukee. By using two box trucks to repeatedly trace the route between the Port to the Milwaukee Art Museum, span links these sites literally and symbolically.
span is presented within the gallery as well as a mobile video performance. The gallery presentation has four projections, one dominated by the port, one dominated by the museum and two that focus on the bridge. The trucks are seen moving throughout the screens. Stylistically borrowing from television and popular film, the video utilizes contemporary narrative compositions and editing to build a feeling of suspense that builds with no seeming resolution.
Weeks after the opening, I enacted the events that appear in the video installation. However, in the performance, both trucks have videos projected onto the rear openings. The video clips are live mixed by an operator within each truck. The clips are taken from the video installation, footage of the trucks filled with boxes, the trucks empty and from a live camera pointed out in front of the truck. From the perspective of someone behind the truck, the live footage has the effect of making the truck invisible.