VideoGame-like moving image piece at exhibition:
Moving Image Stills:
Daria Martin –
“I was intrigued to discover that The Curve was originally designed as a liminal space: a sound buffer to wrap around the back of the Concert Hall. My exhibition explores another sort of ‘back room’– a lost dream diary archive. The installation plays with the dramatic sweep of the grand, semi-circular curved wall – and in particular the way that it enables a cinematic journey of successive ‘reveals’– but also with the space’s more eccentric insides.”
I found Martin’s exhibition very interesting, and the mixture of still and moving image pieces made the work very engaging. Martin made the exhibition interactive, and the viewer had to look through walls, wall around walls and walk in a curve around the space. The room was very dark, apart from very specific lights and a moving image piece. I felt that her use of low lighting was due to her theme of memory, and how memories are hard to see clearly and can be patchy, just like her patches of light. She also used real diary entries in the space, all laid out in a large rectangle that you could only see if you looked through small windows in a wall. These diary entries were also lite with very low lighting, like a dim spot light.
The piece I found most interesting was her moving image, which was displayed on a very large curved screen. The piece was a compilation of small stories, conceptual art films, representing different aspects of her family, and her memories of her grandmother, Susi Stiassni who at age 16, ‘fled with her family from the former Czechoslovakia under the imminent threat of the Nazi occupation in 1938.’ The way in which she represented aspects of the past were very interesting. I felt they were a little hard to interpret. One of the pieces stood out to me, the video depicted an older women playing hide and seek with two others, who then disappear. The women is devastated, and panicked, to only find the other two people easily moments after her panic. This to me reveals elements of the PTSD that Susi Stiassni, Martin’s grandmother must have felt after she fled Czechoslovakia. I really enjoy work in this style, I feel that these conceptual representations pared with real diary entries are a very emotive and creative way to convey real life stories, and important issues. I feel as though the way the conceptual pieces are pared with the real possessions has a narrative creating film-like effect. The moving image also created a sinister atmosphere, as everything was filmed so perfectly, lit so well, however had such an uneasy effect.
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