'Out of Place', 2012
Leung Mee-Ping's videon installation was also part of the Biennial and was located in the Copperas building Liverpool. The installation consisted of six videos, which were projected onto screens that were hanging from the ceiling, that you had to walk between in order to view what was on all sides. The videos were set in six different places: Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo, Smokey Mountain Manila, Bangkok and Varanasi. They depicted busy city life and traffic. As a viewer, you walk through the projections as though you are walking through a city. The camera viewpoint is very much from the eyes of the viewer, as though it is a simulation. The work is interesting because we feel as though we are there, and these are our own memories and experiences. Some of the videos are walking down a busy street, where people push past you and you feel as though you are in the way. The uncomfortable feeling of constantly being in the way and out of place, causes you to keep moving around the space, watching all of the videos. The sounds of traffic, car horns, people talking all add to the stressful scene. I think this was a really successful piece in creating what the artist intended; to make the viewer feel out of place and lost in a different culture. The screens are slightly high up, so that the crowds are too tall, making you feel small and even more lost and insecure in this new world. If I was being critical, I do think the screens could do with being slightly lower, just so that the viewer can implicate themselves in the scene even more so. I found this piece interesting for the same reasons that I found Edward Kienholz's 'Sawdy' interesting - the viewer feels as though they are in the scene, which is a really useful technique for my own themes to do with shared experience and collective memory.
No comments:
Post a Comment