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The following
is from 312 No. 16, Dec. 1, 2007 - Feb. 1, 2008 [Download
Exhibition Publication, .PDF format]:
Stephanie
Loveless, “imMaterial” & “Lines”
In the past,
312 has shown a number of videos dealing with ‘home
movies’ and self-documentation. Two videos that dealt with
this most directly were Tania Sures’s
“Mirror (i’ve missed you and i’ve been meaning
to show you the tape from that day at the beach last summer)”,
shown April 2005, and Alla
Girik & Oksana Shatalova’s “Memory is Immobility”,
shown from August 1 to October 31, 2006. I’ve often wondered
why it is that artists so often deal with these personal mementos,
these commonplace monuments to our inherently normal lives. Many
of us have been guilty at one time or another of subjecting friends
and loved ones to the dreaded ‘slideshow’ of a recent
vacation or event: “Here we are outside the hotel. We had
a really lovely meal in their restaurant…” etc. etc.
When personally giving the presentation, it’s often hard
to believe that others could be uninterested in what, for us,
the participants, was such a great experience. Yet, when on the
receiving end, we’re often bored and dismayed to have another
600 digital photos foisted upon us of other people smiling in
other places. Bless the egalitarian (if somewhat misdirected)
heart of middle-class consumer technology—we are free to
select what to record, present, and watch, no matter how banal.
Still, finding
someone else’s abandoned photo on the ground can be an inexplicably
wonderful event. FOUND
magazine is a testament to this strange fascination that many
of us have with found photographs, notes, and drawings, many so
bewilderingly incomprehensible when missing the original context
(especially without the boring monologue to ruin the mystery).
These found objects can be beautifully mysterious—like a
pleasant moment of déjà vu. The work of Stephanie
Loveless can be like this.
It’s
pretty apparent that Loveless likes messing about with film—the
way it adds fine grain, dust, texture, and unintended blotches—and
the transforming effect it has upon what the camera lens takes
in. The film footage itself would be attractive to watch, if nothing
else, I’m so well-attuned to the allure of motion pictures.
But this isn’t enough for Loveless—she takes that
footage, slows it down, makes it messier, almost more painterly.
In the end, I’m watching the ghostly traces of a bird on
a wire as the footage shakes about, leaving gentle afterimages
all over the screen in her video ‘Lines’. A brief
piano phrase is tapped out, occasionally reversing. Everything
has the vague appearance of an unhurriedly animated fourth-generation
photocopy. The footage Loveless is working with is unabashedly
familiar and ordinary—a rollercoaster, a bird, a swing carousel,
walking along railway tracks—and also hauntingly nostalgic
(at least, in the way that old photos are shorthand for nostalgia).
Her manipulation of the film footage injects a mysterious quality
that suggests the missing content, but gives none of the specifics.
The impulses, desires, and motivations that drove someone to film
these moments remain unknown, but I feel a barely tangible trace.
In another
Loveless video, ‘imMaterial’, I’m treated to
the blissful, yet surreal sight of a woman turning about while
wearing a white dress and a pair of feathery angel’s wings.
The film footage is accompanied by the sound of static, unusual
metallic reverb, and the occasional comments from an off-camera
voice, all while a plaintive acoustic guitar plucks away. Nothing
about the video is high-fidelity—we get close to the woman’s
face, but animated stains and brushstrokes swipe colour all about
the black and white film, obscuring and making sections opaque.
I actually can never get close enough. The woman is implored to
“Do that one more time…” and off she goes, turning
again for the camera and me. I’m again drawn into the ambiguity,
wondering if there is meaning behind the mundane words and actions,
reaching for the ever-elusive content just beyond my grasp. Of
course, it’s not accessible, but I remain curious.
A few years
ago I found a heel-worn photograph of nine fish, all laid out
in a beautiful row on someone’s lawn. This memento of someone’s
day out fishing is pinned up in my office, just a short glance
from my computer monitor. While it’s certainly not a complex
or well-composed photograph, somehow I am still drawn to it. It’s
no wonder that artists like Loveless deal with this kind of subject
matter and imagery—it has allure, no matter how routine,
that cannot be denied by those smitten.
Mark
Prier.
[Download
Exhibition Publication, .PDF format]
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