Cybele Lyle
*San Francisco - USA
Installation
2007
Video, digital and analog photography
There are a few different types of photographs in my work and each operates to a different end. Untitled (Sequence 1), 2007 and Untitled (Sequence 2), 2007 are a pair of analog photographs that are derived from the digital print series. These prints explore the human and emotional quality of my exploration of community. Re-photographed, the original image becomes dimmer and softer, unexpectedly evoking an emotional response. While the original pieces function as an exhaustive collection of snapshots, the re-shot work takes on a spatial dimension. These pieces exist at a slower pace because of their less focused and less detailed look. In contrast to the quantitative focus of the digital pieces, these re-photographed images are much more qualitative – referencing the quality of the moments that are catalogued elsewhere.
I find that combining video and photography works well to bring together different aspects of time and duration in my exploration of distance and the gap. Each medium has qualities that help compensate for the inadequacies of the other.
The Conversation, 2007, is a life-size video projection showing two different conversations of one couple: one on each wall. At moments they seem to be in the same space, and then at others they don’t seem to be talking to each other. The two people in the video are both intimately involved and separated into their own spaces, speaking to the difficulty of navigating the strange combination of alternating intense periods of disconnect and closeness. The life-size corner projection acts to incorporate the viewer into that emotional space. The movement and scale of the video also activates the space by representing the present-time. It expands the interior of the actual gallery space into the interior space within the video. The video alludes to the individual’s interior, specifically the emotional component of the distance between two places.
Both video and photography as media provide structure for my work around the subject of memory. Film and video have other attributes that link it to life. In his essay “Video Black,” Bill Viola writes, “A thought is a function of time, a pattern of growth, and not the ‘thing’ that the lens of the printed word seems to objectify…Duration is the medium that makes thought possible, therefore duration is to consciousness as light is to the eye.” While video suggests the present more than photography and mimics a kind of consciousness, it also carries some of the limitations that go with that. As Metz writes, “in life, and to some extent in film, one piece of time is indefinitely pushed backwards by the next: this is what we call ‘forgetting.’” After a video ends, it is up to our memory to process the information. Susan Sontag writes, “Movies and television programs light up walls, flicker, and go out; but with still photographs the image is also an object…” Pairing photographs with my video helps to compensate for the aspect of forgetting in the video. The photographs are objects that remain present and that one can hold onto and surround oneself with.
© Cybele Lyle &
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