My recent artwork tackles such issues in different ways. I have scoured junkyards, recycling centers and flea markets, looking for examples of aging technologies that defined our existence in the not-so-distant past. What we throw away holds an accurate portrait of who we were. VHS tapes, 35 mm film, hard discs, CDs, to name just a few obsolete mediums that I have used in my art, are all depositories of our memories. When tossing them out, we are also discarding an important part of ourselves. By projecting video animations onto old media, I attempt to reignite life back into them so as to reveal the shared memory they hold within.
I have also projected large-scale video animations on emblematic monuments and historic buildings in cities across the globe. I contact local communities and create events that allow participants to project themselves literally, and metaphorically, onto their surroundings. In this way they claim the history of their city as their own. Using green-screen technology, I often record performers acting out climbing motions that when projected onto a building’s façade, create the illusion of their ascent to the top. By “conquering” these buildings, they become active participants of a shared history, rather than mere spectators of an urban reality.
I like to break away from the confines of the flat screen and create three-dimensional installations that conceptualize media as sculpture.
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