Exhibitions

• Sunday

  MATILDA ASLIZADEH
  September 6–October 11, 2003

  Sunday is a single channel DVD projection seven minutes in duration. In a highly artificial composite of scenic highway viewpoint and beach, groupings of swimsuit-clad young people gossip, flirt and roughhouse. Each group of characters appears to be oblivious to the goings-on around them, their interactions self-contained elements that occur simultaneously, in a staging reminiscent of the dense and lush allegorical landscapes of Peter Breugel. Boys tussle again and again, and the repetition of this sequence seems more menacing each time. A couple tease each other endlessly with playful aggression; petty judgements are repeated until their meaning shifts. Drawing upon concepts of spatial montage, Sunday presents these staged banalities as discrete concurrent narratives, emphasizing the physical proximity and psychological distance of contemporary culture. As the sequences elapse in independently revolving loops, the gestures and phrases form a vocabulary of filmic performance and an index of specific place and time. In combination, the work disrupts the single point of focus for the viewer’s attention, in much the same way as the television news, advertising or the internet presents us with a pastiche of time and space references in one compressed glance.

  Postscript 10: Sharon Kahanoff and Bronwen Payerle on Sunday (PDF)