‘An Intimate Collision of Public and Private Life’
‘Created for both projection and the small screen, five digital artworks made up of three components, soundtrack, moving image and spoken word, randomly combine to produce a potential one hundred and twenty-five unique possibilities. The Slide Show DVD examines the family snapshot, that petrified moment when time stops dead in its tracks, when life becomes a document. The exhibition of this private moment is imbued with contradiction and ambiguity. When engaged with this imagery, when viewing the lives of strangers, assumptions are made and narratives are extracted to complete an otherwise mundane portrayal of everyday life. Beyond the edges of the photograph, on the other side of the frame, there exist a whole host of narratives waiting to be heard. And along with the joys of celebration, the wedding, the school portrait or the seaside snap, there are those times that are best left forgotten, memories to be consigned to the darkest oubliette, there to be forgotten like a past life.’ Marketing copy
In Dec 2003 the Slide Show was shown at the Powerhouse, Nottingham UK using digital projection in a cinematic space. The piece ran for a few hours duration. In February 2004 the piece was installed in a room for the National Review of Live Art, Glasgow, running for three days. The installation included a three piece suite in keeping with the theme of the showing of imagery from the domestic sphere of family photographs and memento. Excerpts have also appeared in the 10 Second Film Festival, Manchester 2003.
The database of five video, five pieces of music and five pieces of spoken dialogue gives the piece 125 combinations.
‘The Slide Show’ began as an investigation into the family photograph and how people document their everyday lives. The investigation looked at some of the forms that this could take; the seaside snap, the wedding, the birthday or the school photograph. For me as the artist it was to become more than just a case of looking at images, more than just creating an engaging piece of work. The process was to become a descent into self, a tapping into memories that had long lain dormant, and the dredging up of some that I had hoped I had truly forgotten. The power of the photograph to stir and cajole into view more than just what exists in the frame is equal to the physical reaction that it also elicits. As an interface to the past, my responses to this process were documented and re-presented as part of the work and the work itself represents this journey of process.
The title, ‘The Slide Show’, is a slight misnomer as the piece exists in a digital form. Its use however has been appropriated to be more literal than practical. During the process of researching and the consequent reflexive action of responding to my own photographs the analogy of the ‘slide‘, the descending down into self, is an appropriate one, for much of the work has been an exploration of the darkness that lives in all of us. The ‘showing’ comes from the public performance of these private moments.
There are five pieces that make up ‘The Slide Show’ all of which can be seen as journeys; the regressive journey from adult to baby; the school year book from past to present; the wedding ritual from bridal arrival to newly wed; the journey into the subconscious and the physical alchemical change of transformation. There are also various minor themes that are commented on such as regression, time, decay, ritual, communication, memory and catharsis. Although the work is very personal, autobiographical, it attempts to communicate on many levels by commenting on the documentation of the everyday event, events that we all share.
Each of the five pieces is made up of sound, spoken monologue and digital video. All these components are 3.30 minutes long. This was a conscious decision as I wanted each configuration to be experienced in the same way as the music video. The form of the song, the traditional 3.30 form that follows verse / chorus / verse / chorus/ middle / chorus (ABABCB) was something that I wanted to experiment with and something I wanted to re-evaluate by placing it within a contemporary art context.