Dan Graham
Roll, 1970
Film installation
2 films, 16mm, transferred from Super-8-films,
color, silent, synchronous projection
on 2 opposite walls
23 sec (loop)
Edition 1/10 + 2 A. P.
Performer: Dan Graham
One filming camera is an inert object, detached (although within the
performer’s visual field), while the other camera, attached to his eye, is
both subject and object. The objective camera is placed with its base
on the ground. After looking through its viewfinder to determine the left
and right extremities which will frame its image, the performer positions
his body and the second camera’s front frame directly facing the inert
camera’s view and at the line of its left framing edge. With both cameras
filming, the performer with camera to his eye rolls slowly toward the
right framing edge of the other camera’s view, with the aim of continuously
orienting his eye/camera’s view to center on the other camera’s position
(and image).
The performer’s legs and frontal body trunk protrude at the bottom
of the held camera’s/eye’s frame through which the performer must
observe his shifting postural placement as the feedback needed to
achieve his orientation (and his image’s). The spectator sees (from within)
the body’s kinesthetic sensations. From his eye view inside the feedback
loop he observes the body’s shifts as it changes position in space
in relation to the position of the aim (the fixed camera). The brain must
correct the muscles to cause a skeletal alignment; this affects the
camera’s aim; it must be re-aligned by the hands to keep open the
visual feedback between the two cameras’ images (upon which the
perception of the piece depends).
The two films’ images are projected for simultaneous viewing at eyelevel
on distant, opposite, parallel walls. Observing the view from the
body feedback loop, a continuously rotating image, the body appears
unweighted. The view from the second “objective-black box-camera” shows
the body from outside as an object orienting with respect to universal
gravity opposing a stationary, parallel force and pressing the body’s
muscular/skeletal frame toward the horizontal. (Dan Graham)
GF0003310.00.0-2002
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