Artist Lecture

Blithe Riley is a digital artist that works with video installation. In her talk today, she discussed several of her completed projects. Two of these projects were the three part installation, Shake, Crawler and Wall and the project Scale and Descent. These two installations differed a lot from each other but at the same time were both very unique pieces of art.

Shake, Crawler, and Wall are three installations that uniquely combine videos, installations and actors. The actors, if present, will interact with the video being shown. In Shake the actors is a Quaker. The video she follows has fours stages (birth, awakening, trance and rest.) The exhibition tells a simple story of a spiritual ritual that balances liberation though dance but also a restriction through faith. The next installation Riley shows the group is Crawler. She admits that she got inspiration for the work from the Matrix and its female lead Trinity. In the work, there is a video of a woman crawling through what looks like a cave. When the woman gets to one end of the video screen and disappears, an actor pops out with the same outfit of the women on the screen. Then she eventually disappears and the same thing happens but on the other side. With these two installations I wondered how well timed are the actors and the videos. I also wondered how different would it be if the actors were not present. Finally, it crossed my mind if the actors got tired of constantly doing the same motions and if different people rotated for the part. The final part of this three piece exhibition was the Wall. In this exhibition the actor doesn’t appear. Instead they are hidden behind a wall. Also, people can physically interact with this one. The participants would stick their hands inside the wall and feel the actor’s hands grab theirs while the participant would look at a prerecorded screen. This could cause confusion and a bit of surprise to the participant. Overall, I believe the installations worked well combing completely different types of art.

The second installation I felt was more extravagant than Shake, Crawler, and Wall. Scale and Descent could not even be enclosed indoors. It was part of a defunct water tower. Between the spaces of the towers were several screens. Inside the screens showed a person climbing and down the tower. The tower itself provided a surface for the onscreen person to climb on. Unlike the others, this installation did not include actors however, it did share the same concept of having an actor on film interacting with an environment not on film.

I have never seen an artist quite like Blithe Riley. It would have been nice to seen Shake, Crawler and Wall in person. That exhibition took a year to make so most likely I would probably not see any of her work in person at St. Mary’s.