Fire & water: three media installations

Though there has been considerable argument over the origins of video art, especially the targeted critiques from feminist writers Martha Rosler and Martha Gever, it was clear from the start (mid-l960s) that some video art was activist-driven (Les Levine, Frank Gillette), while some was more personal, derived from the prevailing forms of body art and performance (Vito Acconci, Joan Jonas). For all early practitioners (Nam Jun Paik, Bruce Nauman, Dan Graham, Ana Mendieta, John Baldessari, to name a few), the spontaneity and instantaneity of video were of special interest. Video recorded and revealed real time, thus affording a sense of immediacy and intimacy not possible in the plastic arts or even film.

While some of the spontaneity of early video has yielded to more sophisticated editing techniques and extravagant multi-channel installations, use of the medium for very personal expression has only grown in the past thirty years. The accessibility and relative affordability of video have yielded an explosion of personal experiments, from the low-tech diaristic tapes of Sadie Bening to the high-tech spiritual sagas of Bill Viola. The recent works of Janet Biggs, Ronald Graham, and Stephen Spretnyjack, all shown recently in New York, are representative of the varied expressions of media art currently finding their way into gallery exhibitions.

Janet Biggs’s three-wall installation, Water Training, at Anna Kustera, juxtaposes images of a horse treading water with underwater shots of several groups of young aquatic dancers and a third scene shot from the bow of a ship slowly making its way through a fjord toward a glacier. Kustera’s multi-level, terraced space is ideal for viewing these images simultaneously. The tranquil beauty of the passage through the fjord provides a foil for the other, more disturbing sequences; though this, too, is fragmented by quick cuts from the underwater video. The horse looks terrified; noose around its neck, eyes glaring, nostrils flaring. The sound of his strained breathing permeates the space. At a right angle to the horse the laborious, synchronized movements of the dancers are projected like surveillance shots of bizarre movements we have no right to see. Several groups of girls ten to thirteen years old dive into the water one after the other and engage in the most strenuous leg movements that allow them to stay afloat and perform graceful above-water gestures for the onlookers. The rigorous choreography echoes the forced running in place of the horse, forming a relentless battle between the weight of the water and the striving to stay afloat.

Figure 1.

Rodney Graham, Vexation Island, cinemascope film, 1997. Photo: Shannon Oksanen, courtesy 303 Gallery, New York.

Figure 2.

Stephen Spretnyjack, Video Installation. Photo: Courtesy E.S. Vandam Gallery, New York.

Figure 3.

Janet Biggs, Water Training, 1997. Two video projections, each video image approximately 109 x 149. Photos: Courtesy Anna Kustera Gallery, New York.

Figure 4.

Janet Biggs, Water Training, 1997. Two video projections, each video image approximately 109 x 149. Photos: Courtesy Anna Kustera Gallery, New York.

Figure 5.

Janet Biggs, Water Training, 1997. Two video projections, each video image approximately 109 x 149. Photos: Courtesy Anna Kustera Gallery, New York.

Biggs has a career-long interest in the harsher aspects of childhood and adolescence. She has created installations with cribs and stuffed toys, night lights, and hundreds of baby shoes. The shots here of the aquatic performers remind us of the paces girls are put through for beauty pageants or cheerleading teams: pressures to perform tasks for the voyeuristic pleasure of their elders. The girls in Biggs’s video are literally kicking to stay alive, otherwise they drown, which is the metaphorical outcome of ruining...