Being more and more recognized by the artistic institutions, the videoinstallation uses the electronic image technology as a basis to develop a contemporary art. The relationship between viewer and monitor changes in a given videoinstallation, as the 2-D image moves out of its plane and expands towards the outer space in order to bring up time and motion to the scenery. The presentation of the 11 videoinstallations, quite diversified among themselves, show the broad possibilities about what could be made and is a unique opportunity to know the work of internationally-renowned artists.
Resurrection Body, videoinstallation by the American artist Rita Myers, attempts to locate the human body as a site for the expression of destabilized and reconstituted meanings. In this setting, the timeless spirirtual icon seeks its contemporary couterpart, elicited from the body as biological presence, displaced into a more diffuse yet historically grounded image mediated by visual and medical technologies, and of necessity rescriped as a state of desire.
artists
Works
Statement Rita Myers, 1994
Ressurection Body (para meu pai)
Several years ago, I had seen a work by Christoforo Simone dei Crocefissi entitled The Dream of the Virgin, painted about 1350 BC. This painting depicts a partially desiccated tree rising from the body of the sleeping Virgin. She rests supine upon an ornately decorated bed, subliminally aware of a figure seated nearby, open book in hand, casting her gaze toward the Virgin. The tree bears a representation of Christ, crucified upon its branches.
At about the same time, I discovered an image of similar resonance, a dying body represented as a site for the release of a sacred phenomenon. In this drawing, reproduced from an alchemical treatise by an anonymous author of the 14th century, a nude male has fallen in a barren landscape. He clutches his breast which has been pierced by an arrow. His phallus has been transformed into an enormous, flowering tree, spreading over his centre and rising high above the landscape.
I became enamored of these, and many similar images spanning centuries. Only later did I realize that their underlying significance for me rested not only with the miraculous appearance of an archetype from the recess of the body, but also with a intersection of text and transition.
On March 16, 1993, at 6:30 PM, my father succumbed finally to a long and dreadful illness. In the waning hours of day, we waited with him for the moment of his death to arrive. In that single moment, his essence vanished. In that single moment, some part of my own has being also fled. A certitude about the ultimate cohesion between permanence and transition ruptured and escaped Ressurrection Body, produced in October 1993, attempts to locate the human body as a site for the expression of destabilized and reconstituted meanings. In this setting, the timeless spiritual icons seek its contemporary counterpart, elicited from the body as biological presence, displaced into a more diffuse yet historically grounded image mediated by visual and medical technologies and, of necessity rescriped as a state of desire.
ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL. "10º Videobrasil: Festival Internacional de Arte Eletrônica": de 20 a 25 de novembro de 1994, São Paulo-SP, 1994.