I N S I D E a performance - the trailer
"The work of art is no longer presented as the mark of a past action, but as the announcement of a forthcoming event (the “trailer effect”), or the proposal of a virtual action. In any event, it is presented as a material time span" BOURRIAUD
I employ backwards planning and durational techniques in much of my video work - excitingly considered, designed to impart particular sets of fundamental information - discourse on the object as Baudrillard puts it in The System of Objects - utilising time as it unfolds from one perspective, to introduce a sudden and unexpected twist or change of events.
For me the process of creating artwork, be it visual or conceptual, is fulfilling and rewarding in itself. However, its preeminent reward comes when shared. Other than offering subjective interpretation this normally entails a passive sharing of a finished work, the creative act being wholly the territory of the artist. To share unfinished work however presents potential for further reward.
The objective of the promotional video was to introduce a message that would change over a duration. However, not within the span of the video itself, as I have previously done, but to extend that time scale beyond the video - to use the video to smuggle 'inside' information from a point in time that when referred back to, even in memory, would reveal an entirely different message. Irit Rogoff, in ‘Smuggling’ – An Embodied Criticality, identifies that, "There is an assumption that meaning is immanent, that it is always already there and precedes its uncovering" (ROGOFF, 2006, p1-2).
The purpose of the video was to anchor all the normal expectations of The Project Space and, using time as an element, to establish a sense of the work being durational, wanting, as Bourriaud describes it, "[t]he encounter with the work [to] give rise not so much to a space . . as to a time span." (BOURRIAD, 1998, p. 59). The 'apparent' message was used to obscure further meaning - meaning that would effectively question audience expectations. Time was used to traffic meaning, smuggling it to where, as Rogoff puts it
The intention was the delivery, with pinpoint accuracy, of new meaning to a precise moment - the start of the Friday event that the video itself advertised.