• Amid the Mundane and the Extreme

    Date posted: October 13, 2008 Author: jolanta
    My video and installation work centers on the co-existence of dualities and places the “screen” as the seam that holds together the boundaries of disparate realities, a vibrant yet questioning meeting point of extremes. My work draws on collections, both physical and virtual as vehicle. My concern is to re-consider the form of such anthologies and re-use or re-cycle their content into new discourse objects, themselves in states of in-between, that undulate their singular and collective constituency in search of an alternative reality. Image

    Vince Briffa

    Image
    Vince Briffa, Amen-Nemmen (I Believe), 1994. Video and light projection, audio, mirrors, digital prints. Installation shot at the Johanniterkirche, Feldkirch, Austria. Courtesy of the artist.

    My video and installation work centers on the co-existence of dualities and places the “screen” as the seam that holds together the boundaries of disparate realities, a vibrant yet questioning meeting point of extremes. My work draws on collections, both physical and virtual as vehicle. My concern is to re-consider the form of such anthologies and re-use or re-cycle their content into new discourse objects, themselves in states of in-between, that undulate their singular and collective constituency in search of an alternative reality. I borrow heavily from the religious iconography of my native country, Malta, and create pieces that are multilayered, and whose surfaces belie their intense humane and existential undertones.

    Recent work includes interactive pieces that make use of a video-clip database to generate non-linear narrative in real time. The work entitled Playing God, shown by the Harris Museum during the Digital Aesthetic 2 exhibition at the Preston Minster in the U.K. last year, centers around the small destinies of the everyday. In a work that is a cross between a video game and a movie, and that makes use of a Baroque Ceborium as projection screen, a viewer needs to help a distressed girl find her stray cat in a huge derelict mansion. The work not only places the viewer in charge of the girl’s and the cat’s destinies, but also at random decides to place the burden of decision-making on the engine that runs the work, thus leaving the viewer quite helpless.

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