The Anri Sala exhibition fills three floors with different works that explore the relationship between sound, space and the body. In “Unravel,” a DJ unifies two different productions of the same song. A disassociation between sound and agency occurs as the audio seamlessly plays throughout the shots that move from broad views of a very empty space to the head of the dj to her hand to the record player. Time, inherently tied to the record, is further amplified by sense of anticipation with djs hand hovering over the record in a position to interrupt. The physicality of the body and hand plays a role in “Ravel” as well where two different pianists are presented through their hands. Together the two left hands become a whole being – both playing Ravel’s composition written for the left hand only, albeit in different time. The fragmented views of the physical body (a hand, a head) is presented with great detail (hair, wrinkles) in contrast to the space-filling immaterial sound produced out of two layered moments in time. Cheryl Donegan too emphasizes the physicality of the body in her works, documenting the costumed form producing art and even absorbing the camera into a headpiece.
TJ Demos focuses on artists use of time and the consideration of mechanical time – that which is measured with extreme precision in the era of advanced science. He points to numerous artists who play with what he calls “suspension of time;” I would counter that these artists are revealing a real-time contemplation of time down even to seconds. Still, he notes how the camera can be a tool to seemingly stop time – to capture changing moments and things and freeze the image of them on film. In an increasingly mechanized world, he speaks of artists parodying contemporary culture or considering the body as a machine. The videos he discusses hover over time either through the actions of the quiet lives of nuns in Northern Ireland or through continuous filming of the empire state building over the course of a night (shot at 24 frames per second but projected at 16 frames per second). An art of “nowness” -of experience of contemplation- is presented as being integral to the works.
Jonathan Beller writes of a different kind of time in relation to the moving image in “Pay Attention.” Instead of the slowed down time discussed in TJ Demos’s text, Beller presents a world flooded with fast moving imagery. He both sees a modern society locating monetary value in the attention of the viewer in everything from film that shapes desire to social media that organizes interactions to the selling of viewing attention on media sites. He further – and this point I feel needs more clarification-sees labor in the viewing spectator. He questions how the eye absorbed into the spectacle is too easily distracts from engaging with the disenfranchised. With much competition for our attention at all times in a digital age, this rings true, however oversimplifies the roots of inequality.