Video for Gallery (2006, reworked 2011)

image courtesy Denis Beaubois

A camera is thrown at a Tokyo art gallery window from outside the premises. The camera subsequently smashes thru the window and lands inside the exhibition space along with the broken glass. The gallery staff must decide what to do with the resulting disruption…

Originally a dual screen work from the Terminal vision project, this version has been reworked for the DLUX compilation into a single channel short work that concentrates on the camera as projectile.

As a projectile the camera’s recorded imagery is influenced by its physical trajectory. When thrown, the camera suddenly develops a ‘body’ with which to sense gravity, velocity and ultimately impact. Its vision is also subjected to the same forces as it is propelled towards its subject. It inhabits the same physical world as its subject and is not a detached omniscient eye where environment and action are manipulated to satisfy its requirements. Furthermore when the camera is used as a projectile it becomes a potential device of assault. To record becomes an aggressive act, due to the physical exchange that eventuates in the collision between camera and subject.

Under the Terminal Vision Project to record something or someone means that both subject and camera must experience or endure a physical exchange, sometimes culminating in discomfort, damage or death (of the camera). The recording process cannot be achieved covertly, as the subject cannot easily ignore or forget the presence of the camera. In this way, the camera’s capture is embodied by the subject through the physical exchange that has occurred. Image is gathered through impact whilst at the same time the camera deposits a sign of its presence onto the subject in the form of the mark derived from the collision. The exchange occurs through contact.

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