ReD Breathing 3, 2021

unit 3, 1st Install

Experience, time and memory are interwoven, the human mind twists and distorts, remembering what it wants, pushing the rest into the sub-or un-conscious. Memories become vague, confused and twisted, while contorted shadows of reality form new events re-lived through dreams and faded memories confusing the real with the imagined. Expressing our inner darkest thoughts, feelings and fears to make them manifest for others is one activity of mark making. This activity of connecting the inner model is a ubiquitous human behaviour practiced throughout time in various media extent in any given epoch. Here I use distorted video and sound to express and connect to my inner most primordial fears, in an attempt to make manifest and confront the duel effects of a personal tragedy and the events of Covid-19 lockdown over this past year. A personal tragedy has forced me to look deep into the abyss, this dark place inside that we all know so well, but try not to venture for fear of the consequences. Helplessly at times we are drawn into this distressing space of hopelessness, grief, pain, fear, anxiety, depression, trauma, through some event or events out of our control. Covid-19 and lockdown have become a mixture of pain, loss grief and despair for many on a global scale. No one’s trauma, grief or despair manifest in exactly the same way. This video is my attempt to express those fears, the terror that can engulf us all at times, a place that can draw us into despair and depression. This piece is a cumulative index of the passage of time, with both the image and sound slowed and distorted, to skew the viewers relationship to real time. The work is multi-faceted, multi-layered using metaphor to convey or evoke in the viewer considerations not only of personal tragedy and mortality but also the wider issues confronting Anthropocene man.

This video piece was made to be projected at about 2m in height in a darkened space, with the volume up loud, but not distorted. 

How the WORK Developed

Below are images made during the exploration and development stages of the video Red Breathing 3, 2021.  The origins of this work can be traced back to Autumn of 2019 when I first created plaster casts of faces which I then used as moulds to make masks in various types of plastic as sculptural pieces which I showed in my first install. The use of plastics was initially intended to comment on the slow suffocation of the planet due to the accumulation of this material in the life cycle and the food chain. The documentation of this earlier work eventually led me to photographing both the plaster casts and the plastic masks with various different light set ups. Ultimatey this led me in late 2020 and early 2021 to experiment with various digital processes, including experimenting with adding various sound tracks. Red Breathing 3 is just one of the digital works made during this process and period of experimentation.