The Space Beyond Silence MediaNoche of recent origin York.

The Space Beyond Silence

MediaNoche

of recent origin York, New York

February 10-March 3 2005

For as it was a tiny installation, "The Space Beyond Silence," at MediaNoche, a fairly strange and innovative space located in Spanish Harlem, take the place ofed in commenting on media, perception and for what cause curatorial decisions inflect the experience of an exhibition. The curator, Monica Nunez Laiseca, asked six artists of diverse cultural backgrounds to create multi-media installations that incorporated the one and the other the concept of silence and the gallery space itself. In the artist panel organized as part of the exhibition, Laiseca named brace texts as her primary sources for the conception of the exhibition--texts that were given to the artists as departure points for their site-specific brews The first was a fragment from Walter Benjamin's the same Way Street (1926) in which he meditates the distance, or lack of between perceiver and object--how the viewer devises themselves onto that which is perceived sensually.

The other was Bill Viola's "A Portrait in Light and Heat" (1979) where he lengthys for a place free from hints or urban distractions as the ideal place to utilize his camera. The impossibility of Viola's inquiry conveys the tension between the advance of novel technology and the desire for privacy and quiet contemplation, a tension that move ons through each of the works in the exhibition.

The viewer was immediately l toward the pieces by means of an intentional lack of wall theme or individual labels. On the front rank wall was a large diagram of the interior space of the gallery, with the names of the six artists written as a spatial guide to the location of their works. Laiseca's confessed aim in doing away with thesis was to encourage viewers to interact with the work alone, without an overload of external distraction or information, and thus allow perception of the work to become a strictly sensory experience. Considering this emphasis, the largest piece, Shh a collaboration between Helen Dennis, a young British artist, and the duo of La Manga (Gabriela Medina and Mario Villa), established performance artists/choreographers from Mexico, was the chiefly successful. Dennis first produced photographic drawings of activity seen by means of the three tall windows in MediaNoche's space throughout the course of a not many days. She layered sketches of these activities onto mylar and transformed these into negatives by way of exposing them to photosensitive paper. She then unraveled them as three huge photographs the same size as the floor-to-ceiling windows. La Manga then produc a silent video performance, a composite of monochromatic colors, geometric lines and abstracted bodily move that was projected onto the black and white photographic drawings. Its force was a seductive visual experience as the slow-moving projection explained on the background of the dynamic photographs and overtook them, negating the frenetic activity with simplified, essential forms. Another engaging work, Interferences, produc according to Australian Eileen Mack, was a guided meditation in face of a computer screen involving profound evolving sounds, like that of a refrigerator humming. as it is mundane sounds were surprisingly tranquil not at home of context, reminiscent of the white noise that normally withdraws from human consciousness, particularly in the sensory onslaught of our contemporary world. The viewer-participant could add further unmutilateds by speaking, coughing or humming into a microphone, with the resulting uninjureds being immediately translated into the program.

sum of two units other pieces seemed to be more about interrupting the technologies that hinder silence than about the excavation of guileless sensory experience. One was a startling exercise in "Surveillance Art" (its acknowledge category now) by Canadian Jamie Allen. The viewer appeared forward a small security screen and by dint of dialing a given number with their confined apartment phone could interrupt the signal and fragment their allow image, deflecting the prying estimates of the camera. The other was a video performance by dint of Korean artist Yoona Kang, taped in the gallery space, in which Kang dons a style of dress reminiscent of the murderer in Brian De Palma's film adjusted to Kill (1980), applying makeup, sunglasses and wig and emerging as an aggressive personality steady without speech. She then simulates ingesting a "technology soup"--replete with a lonely dwelling phone. This piece seemed self-conscious and too aware of other performative works for the camera, like as Cindy Sherman's photographs, and did not breed thoughts on the shifting definitions of silence or the utilization of the sensations as deeply as the other work.

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Laiseca, who is in the United States from Spain upon a Fulbright scholarship, undertook the exhibition for her Master's thesis at the strange York University Museum Studies program, and MediaNoche should be applauded for supporting aspiring curators in this manner. The space, a small gallery supplyed by a grant from the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, make opened as a digital lab in 2003 to teach residents of Spanish Harlem by what mode to make films and use fresh media. Now MediaNoche is making itself a promising egress for experimental curating as well. "The Space Beyond Silence" is existinged as part of "Place," a year-long series of exhibitions that explore the part of technologies in transcultural experience.