Time, Through Windows
Posted by Erik | Filed under Music, Video
Time, Through Windows explores the perception of time, using the passage from spring to winter as a metaphor for the artist’s father’s cycle of life—from child to elder. Music and spoken dialog work in combination with video to create a six-piece narrative that invites the audience into an intimate durational experience. This work, presented as a circular grouping of six audio/video pairs, acts as a vehicle for the audience to contemplate that which might normally go overlooked.
This is a diaristic piece that falls somewhere in the middle between the political diaries of video artists such as Dara Birnbaum, Chantal Ackerman or Krzysztof Wodiczko and the lyrical works of Bill Viola, Mary Lucier, etc. Erik transformed his father’s life stories, told at the end of his life and divided them into six segments or periods of time. At each monitor, the viewer hears one small segment of this life. However, as poignant as they are, it is the visual component that provides the heart-break. Erik chose to film a nondescript comer of Chicago, complete with weedy, empty lot, a fence and a stop light for over six months. As the time goes by we see the seasons move from spring to winter, small changes in the urban landscape, cars and people move at random; always dominated by that stop light-a perfect sundial and metaphor for the relentless march of time. Although this is a very personal piece, it challenges the viewer to enter and contemplate their own memories. Furthermore, because viewers may enter and exit at any point, everyone’s experience of the stories will be different, thus creating a form of unique and unexpected “interactivity”.
Suzanne Cohan-Lange, Founder & Chair Emeritus, Interdisciplinary Arts Department, Columbia College Chicago
Six Months in the Making
This work was filmed continuously from July 1 to December 31, 2007. The footage was then compressed at a ten-to-one ratio, producing twelve hours of video, moving in two-second increments of time. The score was composed to sync to the “ticks” of this footage, timed at 60 or 120 beats per second.
In gallery installation, six black AutoPoles each support a video/audio pair. Audio plays through focused speakers that allow the audience to listen to each narrative in open-air isolation. The black fixture rising up from floor to ceiling is strikingly similar in appearance to the lone streetlight in the work.
Erik Deerly’s “Time, Through Windows” is an installation of great quiet authority. The deceptive simplicity of the design, which actually was kind of a feat of technological coordination, particularly for that exhibition space, created a place for listening in a world and in a room where listening is becoming impossible. Erik’s working method is assured and diligent; he knew what he wanted and he achieved it. The decision to allow the structure to be part of the installation, instead of a more cloaked and hidden effect, was an interesting counterpoint to the quiet understatement of the video images. Actually, Erik has been making work of this quality for some time; this piece was not a leap forward by any means. But the maturity of his vision has been consistent, and his concerns about death and time are adult and quietly thoughtful.
Jenny Magnus, Artistic Director, Curious Theatre Branch
Soundtrack available for download on its own…
Tags: arts, audio, chicago, columbia college chicago, cycle, death, durational, father, gallery, images, installation, lens, method, mfa, narrative, perspective, rhythm, score, simplicity, Spoken-word, time, Video, Visual, world
