SITE 21
Zankel Building Basement
Elisabeth Molin
ITS, 2018
Monitor, HD Video, Stereo, Color
2.31 min loop
ITS explores the hidden and unseen spaces within the Teachers College. The video flicks in and out of images and words, fictions and suggestions of what have or might have happened here. The title is inspired by one of the door signs at Teachers College which peaked Molin’s imagination for its mysterious abstraction. A possible misspelling of “IT’S” or “IT,” the word can be read as no more than a mishap, yet for for Molin such dislocations are a fertile ground for triggering a chain of free associations.
Rabbya Naseer & Hurmat Ul Ain
White as Snow, 2008
Single Channel Video, 2 minutes 15 seconds
The video runs on a continuous loop, in which the artists sit against a bare white wall, narrating facts about themselves in short sentences, delivered in the manner of a rhythmic chorus sung in their native language, Urdu. Women’s autobiographies exist within the context of their daily lives and is often addressed as a collective experience. To reflect this reality, the sentences that refer to one woman are recited by both women in the video, deliberately confusing individuality and collectivity. The elaborate wedding veils, covering their heads, are unfashionable and worn-out, seemingly inherited from their mothers along with the instructions of correct social behavior for women.
Macon Reed
Gymnasts, 2014
Single Channel Video, 6 minutes, 15 seconds
Gymnasts was created within the installation, Physical Education. Each female gymnast completes a series of accent gestures that remain after removing the actual gymnastic stunts from their routines. Exploring what may be perceived as an unintentional queering of feminine identity within a rigidly heterosexual culture, Gymnasts highlights the athletes' combination of high femme appearance, fierce individualist athletic prowess, and effects of teamwork. This “queering,” or subtle disruption, is found in the contrast between the gymnasts' “masculine” bodies (narrow hips, broad shoulders, highly developed musculature), and their “feminine” presentation (make up, ponytails, bows).
Greg Climer
Knitted Film, 2018
Cotton knitting
62 Pounds
16 second video loop of an excerpt
This work was created by knitting each frame of an animation, which is shown in tandem alongside the film strip on view at site #21 in Teachers College basement. Digital technology has replaced celluloid as our primary medium for storing cinematic images, but the pixel on the XY axis has been used to make images long before the invention of the computer. We simply called it a stitch. Knitting has always been able to create images using the same XY axis as digital images. Fair Isle Knits are one of the more widely known examples. This work explores the overlap between the two mediums by knitting a film, one frame at a time. Through the work, Climer celebrates our technology’s new capabilities and questions the tangible aspects of film. Is the medium of the film equal to the content? Textile based imagery is older than celluloid yet this project could not exist without digital technology, moving film beyond celluloid. The merging of the oldest crafts and the newest technologies helps us imagine new crafts from our old technologies.
Saša Tkačenko
Perfect Ride, 2012
Single Channel Video, 5 minutes, 4 seconds
In the interior of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, which was neglected for years, a skater is trying to perform what is most important to him – the perfect ride. The atmosphere of timelessness that is dominant in the space of an “abandoned” museum appears as the perfect place to perform na incompatible action that lends its endless reconstruction new character. The video is a homage to the building – a masterpiece of modernist architecture in Yugoslavia – that, despite all current technical shortcomings, remains monumental and incredibly powerful.