work descriptions
Apocrypha
digital video installation video, 4:36, 2005
Apocrypha originated from a series of three videos and and one video installation that documented the stories of four Kentucky and Indiana
women. The memories of these women, like the places they were from, now
exist only through the oral history shared by those who knew them.
Interviews with family and friends of these women were recorded,
layered and combined with multilayered video of what is left of their
communities. This video installation was the last in a series of eight
solo shows in the Speed Art Museum’s (Louisville, Ky.) Presence exhibition. Apocrypha was housed in a specially made architect-designed
14-by-34-foot structure inside the museum. Curator Julien Robson
described the installation:
"Blocking off two-thirds of the Presence room, Fuchs leads the viewer
into a narrow passage at one end of the structure where she places us
almost directly in front of the screen, heightening our illusion of
feeling "inside" her projection. ... This closeness, combined with the
indistinct nature of the projected image, makes it difficult to know
what we are viewing and as a consequence, it is made impossible to
decode. ... We are immersed in the scale of Apocrypha. .... At the same
time, we hear sounds of undifferentiated and overlapping voices coming
from behind the screen, which also provide a seemingly imperceptible
auditory context for us to recognize any suggestions of objects, clear
and apparent.
In grasping the absence of a recognizable image, we gain a distinct
perception of that which is presumed to be known, apparent, or perhaps
even visible. Using this insight, the artist makes us gradually more
aware of the ordinary by taking it away. Rather than presenting the
familiar in the form of object, places and individuals, Fuchs engages
in a critical dialogue regarding the substance of what is known. Within
this framework, we may arrive at the concept of the other, be it a
narrative, voice, identity, or presence - the omission of which, Fuchs’
work would suggest, is an act of apocrypha."
Apocrypha premiered March 1, 2005 in the Presence series at the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Ky. Presence was a unique exhibition where eight artworks were shown individually for twelve months in a specially constructed space. The artists included were Franz Gertsch, Ik-Joong Kang, Bill Henson, Mark Wallinger, Gerhard Richter, Chris Cunningham, Bernie Seale and Valerie Sullivan Fuchs.
Un-titled
2005, 8:23, digital video projection
Un-titled, inspired by theories of Althusser and Lacan, addresses
desire in the construction of an individual’s identity within family,
nation and place. Un-titled opens to a white background and a
recounting of the story of the artist’s grandfather’s journey to
Weingarten, Germany, to find his relatives. After a 20-year friendship
and after his death, the German family revealed they were not related
to her grandfather. Home movies from the 1970 meeting of the families
in Weingarten, spliced with 1940 home movies of her grandfather’s
hometown, Milltown, Ind., are mirrored to create a new unfolding
landscape. German poems of desire from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana
performed by Louisville Opera singer Dane Waters, enervate the video’s
reference to the authoritarian structures of media from which an
individual or nation constructs narratives or histories.
Un-titled first premiered in the NOWHERE exhibit at the Gallerie Eugen
Lendl in Graz, Austria, curated by Julien Robson of the Speed Art
Museum in Louisville, Ky. The last showing was at the Parnu’s Film and
Video Festival, Estonia, Nov. 8, 2006
01:02:08
2002, 1868 frame loop, digital video projection, 1,868 inkjet prints on paper stacked
01:02:08 is a digital video projection of waving grass onto a stack of
1,868 printed frames of the digital video. This projection, whose size
is determined by the physical manifestation of itself, forms an almost
perfect temporal and spatial loop. When video or film is edited on a
computer, it changes the structure by interpreting the moving image
into zeros and ones. This alteration allows the video or film to be
reproduced at any number of frame rates. For 01:02:08, 30 frames per
second was chosen because it was the closest frame rate to video.
Through this piece, one can begin exploring the structural, perceptual,
temporal and spatial nature of the moving image. By examining the
invisible structures and frameworks that create and carry to us to
perception, interpretation and meaning, one can also begin to question
the invisible underlying presences, structures and/or assumptions in
one’s life. What is present and absent in history, culture and society
is determined and drawn out initially through its structure, language,
hierarchy and order. A medium can create another reality unto itself:
Its structure can become invisible. By examining the frameworks and
structures that give us perception and meaning in a medium, the
underlying concepts may become clearer and thus be opened to
questioning.
Collection of Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson
Invisible Skin
2001 , Video projection of the Ohio River onto unfired clay 11” dia. 7.5” ht.
The interaction of both the ancient art of clay and the state-of-the-art technology of digital video and sound, create an actual and metaphorical event for the viewer. An event has duration, or time, and happens within a designated place, or space. In this video installation, time and space become a material for the artist beyond the traditional use of time and space as abstracted subject. The merging of clay and video also invites the viewer to create a metaphorical link to the ancient past and the technologically driven present.
This video installation not only creates the opportunity for an active dialogue between the people and the object but also between the objects themselves. Instead of the viewer becoming the screen (Vito Acconci) the object is the receptor of the projection, altering its surface and structure. The clay vessel is molded by its individual video and each video is made and determined by the shape of the object, or receiver.
The Stripper
2006, Digital video 2:03
The first frames are white projected light. As the video progresses the light splits into the colors of the visible spectrum of light, red, orange yellow, green, blue and violet and their mixtures, magenta and cyan. In visible light, when there is the absence of all the colors there only remains black.
This piece premiered in ‘current’, October 6, 2006, at Swanson-Reed Contemporary, Louisville, Kentucky.
Florence Spear Crowder
2003, 2:20 digital video
Florence Spear Crowder, is the third in a series of three experimental documentaries which focuses on how women, who were from communities which no longer exist, have had a major affect on those who have heard their stories, seen their work or had direct experiences with them. Their lives, stories and memories were kept alive only through oral history. After two years of researching, interviewing and making three short documentaries about the three women, I made a final but separate piece, Apocrypha for the Presence series at the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky 2005. These works seek to create a presence for the women by identifying, celebrating, and making a memorial to them, their accomplishments and their impact on their communities.
(Florence Spear Crowder premiered in and near these women’s communities, Louisville and Hawesville, Kentucky and Milltown, Indiana in 2003. Florence Spear Crowder premiered in Belgrade, Serbia in 2004.)
a horizontal line makes a stable image
2007, Digital video, 66 seconds
"Video signals are in constant motion. They are generated within the camera and can circulate inside the system of recording and transmission (the closed circuit).”
- Yvonne Spielmann
Using found family films from the 1940s to the present, a horizontal line makes a stable image addresses how the images of one's life are recorded, in memory, on video and on film. Memories and experiences are all processed individually and collectively and are constantly played, re-played and re-contextualized. What happens when a memory is created from the experience of viewing events recorded from the past?
- Valerie Sullivan Fuchs
“A horizontal line makes a stable image by Valerie Sullivan Fuchs speaks to our specific perceptions of family, family myths, and the absence of real histories. Each of us creates our own individual concept of our family and each family we come into contact with. We cannot share these impressions or know someone else’s vision and, as a further complication, we change our recollection of our family and others depending on our moods and feelings at each moment. We never really get an unbiased image of family. Fuchs brings this to our awareness by taking the medium of videoóand refusing the viewer the expected clear, linear story.”
- Karen Gillenwater, Director of Art Galleries and Curator of Collections, Georgetown College
Lost Worlds
1998, Six channel video installation video projection onto unfired clay
Lost Worlds is an installation of five clay hemispheres and five digital video projections and one monitor. Each unfired clay piece, Pavane, Micro/Macro, Gathering, Nature, & Nature and Man, has sound digitally edited with the music or sounds from archaic cultures. In the installation space, these sounds combine together as video projections animate the clay pieces.
The juxtapositon of the unfired clay to the digital technology of video projection suggests a perspective of the immediacy and temporality of technology in any age. The video projections animate the clay surfaces in reference to the animation of life or “Orenda” which Jamake Highwater decribes in The Primal Mind; “...as the force which animates the members of the tribe, what remains is the tribe, the community, the Orenda.” Lost Worlds is part of a search for what remains of a culture and what will be left for those in the future.
Zero to Sixty
2005, Five channel digital video installation Louisville International Airport
42 min - 5 min
Zero to sixty is a five channel video installation where the first video is the "real time" of 42 minutes at 60 mph and the last video, 5 minutes, is the same 42 minutes accelerated to 500 mph. This gradual acceleration of the 42 minute trip through the Kentucky landscape is documented over 5 plasma screens.
Collection of Louisville International Airport
Under the Sod
2003, 1 hour loop digital video projection onto inversed sod
Under the Sod is a digital video projection installation where the top of the sod, the grass, has been recorded waving in the wind and then projected onto the back or the dirt side of the same section of sod.
White Light
2006, (8) 4" x 3" thermal digital prints onto metal mounted onto electrical poles
The visible spectrum of white light red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, and white and black is printed onto metal plates and installed onto adjacent electrical poles along the same street. |
