Art that explores time and memory
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0:01 - 0:03I want to start with a question.
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0:03 - 0:05Where does an artwork begin?
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0:06 - 0:09Now sometimes that question is absurd.
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0:09 - 0:13It can seem deceptively simple,
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0:13 - 0:16as it was when I asked the question
with this piece, "Portable Planetarium," -
0:16 - 0:18that I made in 2010.
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0:18 - 0:20I asked the question:
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0:20 - 0:24"What would it look like
to build a planetarium of one's own?" -
0:24 - 0:26I know you all ask that every morning,
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0:26 - 0:28but I asked myself that question.
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0:29 - 0:30And as an artist,
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0:30 - 0:33I was thinking about our effort,
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0:33 - 0:39our desire, our continual longing
that we've had over the years -
0:39 - 0:42to make meaning of the world around us
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0:42 - 0:43through materials.
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0:43 - 0:47And for me, to try and find
the kind of wonder, -
0:47 - 0:52but also a kind of futility
that lies in that very fragile pursuit, -
0:52 - 0:54is part of my art work.
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0:54 - 0:57So I bring together
the materials I find around me, -
0:57 - 1:01I gather them to try
and create experiences, -
1:01 - 1:04immersive experiences that occupy rooms,
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1:04 - 1:07that occupy walls, landscapes, buildings.
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1:07 - 1:10But ultimately,
I want them to occupy memory. -
1:11 - 1:13And after I've made a work,
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1:13 - 1:18I find that there's usually one memory
of that work that burns in my head. -
1:18 - 1:20And this is the memory for me --
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1:20 - 1:22it was this sudden
kind of surprising experience -
1:22 - 1:26of being immersed inside that work of art.
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1:26 - 1:29And it stayed with me
and kind of reoccurred in my work -
1:29 - 1:30about 10 years later.
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1:30 - 1:34But I want to go back
to my graduate school studio. -
1:34 - 1:38I think it's interesting, sometimes,
when you start a body of work, -
1:38 - 1:41you need to just completely
wipe the plate clean, -
1:41 - 1:42take everything away.
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1:42 - 1:45And this may not look
like wiping the plate clean, -
1:45 - 1:46but for me, it was.
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1:46 - 1:50Because I had studied painting
for about 10 years, -
1:50 - 1:52and when I went to graduate school,
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1:52 - 1:55I realized that I had developed skill,
but I didn't have a subject. -
1:55 - 1:56It was like an athletic skill,
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1:56 - 1:59because I could paint the figure quickly,
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1:59 - 2:00but I didn't know why.
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2:00 - 2:02I could paint it well,
but it didn't have content. -
2:02 - 2:06And so I decided to put
all the paints aside for a while, -
2:06 - 2:09and to ask this question, which was:
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2:09 - 2:13"Why and how do objects
acquire value for us?" -
2:13 - 2:18How does a shirt that I know
thousands of people wear, -
2:18 - 2:19a shirt like this one,
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2:19 - 2:21how does it somehow feel like it's mine?
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2:21 - 2:22So I started with that experiment,
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2:23 - 2:26I decided, by collecting materials
that had a certain quality to them. -
2:26 - 2:29They were mass-produced,
easily accessible, -
2:29 - 2:32completely designed
for the purpose of their use, -
2:32 - 2:34not for their aesthetic.
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2:34 - 2:37So things like toothpicks, thumbtacks,
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2:37 - 2:39pieces of toilet paper,
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2:39 - 2:44to see if in the way that I put my energy,
my hand, my time into them, -
2:44 - 2:49that the behavior could actually create
a kind of value in the work itself. -
2:49 - 2:52One of the other ideas is,
I wanted the work to become live. -
2:52 - 2:54So I wanted to take it
off of the pedestal, -
2:54 - 2:55not have a frame around it,
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2:55 - 2:58have the experience not be
that you came to something -
2:58 - 3:00and told you that it was important,
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3:00 - 3:03but that you discover
that it was in your own time. -
3:04 - 3:07So this is like a very,
very old idea in sculpture, -
3:07 - 3:12which is: How do we breathe life
into inanimate materials? -
3:12 - 3:15And so, I would go to a space like this,
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3:15 - 3:16where there was a wall,
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3:16 - 3:18and use the paint itself,
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3:18 - 3:20pull the paint out off the wall,
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3:20 - 3:22the wall paint into space
to create a sculpture. -
3:22 - 3:24Because I was also interested in this idea
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3:24 - 3:28that these terms, "sculpture,"
"painting," "installation" -- -
3:28 - 3:31none of these mattered in the way
we actually see the world. -
3:31 - 3:33So I wanted to blur those boundaries,
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3:33 - 3:37both between mediums
that artists talk about, -
3:37 - 3:40but also blur the experience
of being in life and being in art, -
3:40 - 3:42so that when you are in your everyday,
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3:42 - 3:44or when you are in one of my works,
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3:44 - 3:48and you saw, you recognized the everyday,
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3:48 - 3:52you could then move that experience
into your own life, -
3:52 - 3:56and perhaps see the art in everyday life.
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3:56 - 3:58I was in graduate school in the '90s,
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3:58 - 4:01and my studio just became
more and more filled with images, -
4:01 - 4:02as did my life.
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4:02 - 4:06And this confusion of images and objects
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4:06 - 4:10was really part of the way
I was trying to make sense of materials. -
4:10 - 4:12And also, I was interested
in how this might change -
4:12 - 4:15the way that we actually experience time.
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4:15 - 4:18If we're experiencing time
through materials, -
4:18 - 4:23what happens when images and objects
become confused in space? -
4:23 - 4:27So I started by doing some
of these experiments with images. -
4:27 - 4:31And if you look back to the 1880s,
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4:31 - 4:35that's when the first photographs
started turning into film. -
4:35 - 4:40And they were done
through studies of animals, -
4:40 - 4:41the movement of animals.
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4:41 - 4:44So horses in the United States,
birds in France. -
4:44 - 4:46They were these studies of movement
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4:46 - 4:48that then slowly,
like zoetropes, became film. -
4:49 - 4:51So I decided, I will take an animal
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4:51 - 4:53and I'm going to play with that idea
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4:53 - 4:58of how the image is not static
for us anymore, it's moving. -
4:58 - 4:59It's moving in space.
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4:59 - 5:03And so I chose
as my character the cheetah, -
5:03 - 5:07because she is the fastest
land-dwelling creature on earth. -
5:07 - 5:08And she holds that record,
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5:08 - 5:10and I want to use her record
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5:10 - 5:14to actually make it kind of
a measuring stick for time. -
5:14 - 5:18And so this is what she looked like
in the sculpture -
5:18 - 5:19as she moved through space.
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5:19 - 5:22This kind of broken framing
of the image in space, -
5:22 - 5:25because I had put up notepad paper
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5:25 - 5:28and had it actually project on it.
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5:28 - 5:31Then I did this experiment
where you have kind of a race, -
5:31 - 5:33with these new tools and video
that I could play with. -
5:33 - 5:35So the falcon moves out in front,
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5:35 - 5:37the cheetah, she comes in second,
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5:37 - 5:40and the rhino is trying
to catch up behind. -
5:40 - 5:42Then another one of the experiments,
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5:42 - 5:43I was thinking about how,
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5:43 - 5:47if we try and remember
one thing that happened to us -
5:47 - 5:50when we were, let's say, 10 years old.
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5:50 - 5:53It's very hard to remember
even what happened in that year. -
5:53 - 5:56And for me, I can think
of maybe one, maybe two, -
5:56 - 6:01and that one moment
has expanded in my mind -
6:01 - 6:03to fill that entire year.
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6:03 - 6:06So we don't experience time
in minutes and seconds. -
6:06 - 6:10So this is a still
of the video that I took, -
6:10 - 6:11printed out on a piece of paper,
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6:11 - 6:15the paper is torn and then the video
is projected on top of it. -
6:15 - 6:17And I wanted to play with this idea
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6:17 - 6:21of how, in this kind of
complete immersion of images -
6:21 - 6:23that's enveloped us,
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6:23 - 6:27how one image can actually grow
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6:27 - 6:28and can haunt us.
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6:29 - 6:30So I had all of these --
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6:30 - 6:34these are three out of, like,
100 experiments I was trying with images -
6:34 - 6:36for over about a decade,
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6:36 - 6:37and never showing them,
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6:37 - 6:42and I thought, OK, how do I bring this
out of the studio, into a public space, -
6:42 - 6:45but retain this kind of energy
of experimentation -
6:45 - 6:48that you see when you go
into a laboratory, -
6:48 - 6:50you see when you go into a studio,
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6:50 - 6:52and I had this show coming up
and I just said, -
6:52 - 6:55alright, I'm going to put my desk
right in the middle of the room. -
6:55 - 6:57So I brought my desk
and I put it in the room, -
6:57 - 7:01and it actually worked
in this kind of very surprising way to me, -
7:02 - 7:07in that it was this kind of flickering,
because of the video screens, from afar. -
7:07 - 7:08And it had all
of the projectors on it, -
7:08 - 7:11so the projectors were creating
the space around it, -
7:11 - 7:14but you were drawn towards
the flickering like a flame. -
7:14 - 7:17And then you were enveloped in the piece
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7:17 - 7:19at the scale that we're all
very familiar with, -
7:19 - 7:24which is the scale of being in front
of a desk or a sink or a table, -
7:24 - 7:28and you are immersed, then,
back into this scale, -
7:28 - 7:32this one-to-one scale
of the body in relation to the image. -
7:32 - 7:33But on this surface,
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7:33 - 7:38you had these projections on paper
being blown in the wind, -
7:38 - 7:41so there was this confusion
of what was an image -
7:41 - 7:42and what was an object.
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7:42 - 7:45So this is what the work looked like
when it went into a larger room, -
7:45 - 7:47and it wasn't until I made this piece
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7:47 - 7:52that I realized that I'd effectively made
the interior of a planetarium, -
7:52 - 7:54without even realizing that.
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7:54 - 7:59And I remembered, as a child,
loving going to the planetarium. -
7:59 - 8:01And back then, the planetarium,
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8:01 - 8:04there was always not only
these amazing images on the ceiling, -
8:04 - 8:08but you could see the projector itself
whizzing and burring, -
8:08 - 8:11and this amazing camera
in the middle of the room. -
8:11 - 8:15And it was that, along with seeing
the audience around you looking up, -
8:15 - 8:18because there was an audience
in the round at that time, -
8:18 - 8:21and seeing them, and experiencing,
being part of an audience. -
8:21 - 8:25So this is an image from the web
that I downloaded -
8:25 - 8:28of people who took images
of themselves in the work. -
8:28 - 8:29And I like this image
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8:29 - 8:32because you see how the figures
get mixed with the work. -
8:33 - 8:37So you have the shadow of a visitor
against the projection, -
8:37 - 8:40and you also see the projections
across a person's shirt. -
8:40 - 8:43So there were these self-portraits
made in the work itself, -
8:43 - 8:44and then posted,
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8:44 - 8:48and it felt like a kind of cyclical
image-making process. -
8:48 - 8:50And a kind of an end to that.
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8:50 - 8:54But it reminded me and brought me back
to the planetarium, -
8:54 - 8:55and that interior,
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8:55 - 8:57and I started to go back to painting.
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8:57 - 9:01And thinking about how a painting
is actually, for me, -
9:01 - 9:04about the interior images
that we all have. -
9:04 - 9:06There's so many interior images,
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9:06 - 9:09and we've become so focused
on what's outside our eyes. -
9:09 - 9:13And how do we store memory in our mind,
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9:13 - 9:16how certain images emerge out of nowhere
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9:16 - 9:18or can fall apart over time.
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9:18 - 9:21And I started to call this series
the "Afterimage" series, -
9:21 - 9:25which was a reference to this idea
that if we all close our eyes right now, -
9:25 - 9:28you can see there's this flickering
light that lingers, -
9:28 - 9:30and when we open it again,
it lingers again -- -
9:30 - 9:32this is happening all the time.
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9:32 - 9:37And an afterimage is something
that a photograph can never replace, -
9:37 - 9:39you never feel that in a photograph.
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9:39 - 9:43So it really reminds you of the limits
of the camera's lens. -
9:43 - 9:46So it was this idea of taking the images
that were outside of me -- -
9:46 - 9:47this is my studio --
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9:48 - 9:52and then trying to figure out how
they were being represented inside me. -
9:52 - 9:53So really quickly,
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9:53 - 9:58I'm just going to whiz through
how a process might develop -
9:58 - 9:59for the next piece.
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9:59 - 10:01So it might start with a sketch,
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10:01 - 10:04or an image that's burned in my memory
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10:04 - 10:05from the 18th century --
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10:05 - 10:07it's Piranesi's "Colosseum."
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10:08 - 10:10Or a model the size of a basketball --
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10:10 - 10:12I built this around a basketball,
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10:12 - 10:15the scale's evidenced
by the red cup behind it. -
10:15 - 10:18And that model can be put
into a larger piece as a seed, -
10:18 - 10:20and that seed can grow
into a bigger piece. -
10:20 - 10:24And that piece can fill
a very, very large space. -
10:24 - 10:29But it can funnel down into a video
that's just made from my iPhone, -
10:29 - 10:33of a puddle outside my studio
in a rainy night. -
10:34 - 10:38So this is an afterimage
of the painting made in my memory, -
10:38 - 10:42and even that painting can fade
as memory does. -
10:42 - 10:46So this is the scale of a very small image
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10:46 - 10:47from my sketchbook.
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10:47 - 10:49You can see how it can explode
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10:49 - 10:52to a subway station
that spans three blocks. -
10:52 - 10:55And you could see how going
into the subway station -
10:55 - 10:59is like a journey through
the pages of a sketchbook, -
10:59 - 11:04and you can see sort of a diary of work
writ across a public space, -
11:04 - 11:07and you're turning the pages
of 20 years of art work -
11:07 - 11:09as you move through the subway.
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11:09 - 11:13But even that sketch
actually has a different origin, -
11:13 - 11:19it has an origin in a sculpture
that climbs a six-story building, -
11:19 - 11:22and is scaled to a cat from the year 2002.
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11:22 - 11:25I remember that because I had
two black cats at the time. -
11:26 - 11:28And this is an image of a work from Japan
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11:28 - 11:31that you can see
the afterimage of in the subway. -
11:31 - 11:32Or a work in Venice,
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11:33 - 11:35where you see the image
etched in the wall. -
11:35 - 11:40Or how a sculpture
that I did at SFMOMA in 2001, -
11:40 - 11:42and created this kind of dynamic line,
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11:42 - 11:45how I stole that to create a dynamic line
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11:45 - 11:48as you descend down
into the subway itself. -
11:48 - 11:51And this merging of mediums
is really interesting to me. -
11:51 - 11:54So how can you take a line
that pulls tension like a sculpture -
11:54 - 11:56and put it into a print?
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11:56 - 11:58Or then use line
like a drawing in a sculpture -
11:58 - 12:01to create a dramatic perspective?
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12:01 - 12:04Or how can a painting mimic
the process of printmaking? -
12:05 - 12:08How can an installation
use the camera's lens -
12:08 - 12:10to frame a landscape?
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12:10 - 12:15How can a painting on string
become a moment in Denmark, -
12:15 - 12:17in the middle of a trek?
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12:18 - 12:21And how, on the High Line,
can you create a piece -
12:21 - 12:24that camouflages itself
into the nature itself -
12:24 - 12:27and becomes a habitat
for the nature around it? -
12:29 - 12:32And I'll just end with two pieces
that I'm making now. -
12:32 - 12:34This is a piece called "Fallen Sky"
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12:34 - 12:37that's going to be a permanent
commission in Hudson Valley, -
12:37 - 12:40and it's kind of the planetarium
finally come down -
12:40 - 12:43and grounding itself in the earth.
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12:43 - 12:46And this is a work from 2013
that's going to be reinstalled, -
12:46 - 12:50have a new life in the reopening of MOMA.
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12:50 - 12:54And it's a piece that the tool
itself is the sculpture. -
12:54 - 12:57So the pendulum, as it swings,
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12:57 - 12:59is used as a tool to create the piece.
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12:59 - 13:02So each of the piles of objects
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13:02 - 13:08go right up to one centimeter
to the tip of that pendulum. -
13:08 - 13:12So you have this combination
of the lull of that beautiful swing, -
13:12 - 13:16but also the tension that it constantly
could destroy the piece itself. -
13:16 - 13:20And so, it doesn't really matter
where any of these pieces end up, -
13:20 - 13:23because the real point for me
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13:23 - 13:26is that they end up
in your memory over time, -
13:26 - 13:29and they generate ideas beyond themselves.
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13:30 - 13:31Thank you.
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13:31 - 13:38(Applause)
- Title:
- Art that explores time and memory
- Speaker:
- Sarah Sze
- Description:
-
Artist Sarah Sze takes us on a kaleidoscopic journey through her work: immersive installations as tall as buildings, splashed across walls, orbiting through galleries -- blurring the lines between time, memory and space. Explore how we give meaning to objects in this beautiful tour of Sze's experiential, multimedia art.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 13:51
HUY QUANG TRAN commented on English subtitles for How we experience time and memory through art | ||
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for How we experience time and memory through art | ||
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for How we experience time and memory through art | ||
Oliver Friedman approved English subtitles for How we experience time and memory through art | ||
Oliver Friedman edited English subtitles for How we experience time and memory through art | ||
Krystian Aparta accepted English subtitles for How we experience time and memory through art | ||
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for How we experience time and memory through art | ||
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for How we experience time and memory through art |
HUY QUANG TRAN
Hi,
Should we update:
4:35 -4:40: And they were done
through studies of animals,
by:
4:35 -4:40: And they were done through
experimentation with these studies of animals,
Thanks