Newark - 2005

From Rhizome Artbase
Gaia Persico
2005
Description

Newark - 2005 is made on-situ with a laptop from real life observations of the view from the hotel room window. A single viewpoint of the city is shown; this is a still, freeze-framed shot of the metropolis, which acts as a stage where the various smaller parts perform.
Only the movements occurring during the making of the original image are recorded, these are minimal and easily missed: a light switched on and off, a shadow appearing, a reflection on a window, curtains blown in the wind. Long intervals of stillness punctuate time between each of these actions, leaving the viewer waiting for the next movement and being forced to closely inspect the animation in order not to miss it.
The drawings are succinct, stripping away any surplus information and aim at extrapolating the essential. The interest lies not in the location exoticism but in seeing the beauty of the non-monumental and the understated, giving an ambivalent image of the city where the human presence is implied rather than actually seen.

Gaia Persico
7 April 2006
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