Deadpan (2009-2011)
This installation aimed to expand two different works by forcing them into collusion. Both works entail a commonality in process that I knew would form a strong substructure for the installation. In visualetymology, I used remembered drawing exercises and gestures to take photographs of the moon, whereas in deadpan, I recorded my intervention with a MoMA art history podcast.
This video is an attempt to span the gap between performance and its documentation. in this short piece, I am driving in the rain. I am playing a recorded MoMA speech on my iPod over the car radio. During the speech, an art historian's strident, authoritarianism is punctured by a question from the audience she cannot answer, about 'deadpan'. Within this moment we find enclosed doubt, and through which the veil of certainty is lifted. I attempt to rewind the iPod to play exactly this moment as much as I can, but while distracted, my ability to do so is impaired. Such process creates a conflation between the image as viewed and the audio that accompanies it. The image poetically represents that moment of internal questioning and connects to my overriding interest in the viewer, particularly where the voice says "well, ...I think that deadpan...leaves a lot of work up the audience..."
