One of the artists mentioned in the book The Art of Projection, which I have discussed previously is Diana Thater, an artist I found intriguing not just for her ingenious use of the projected frame to merge the real and the computer generated space, but also for her political stand point. She uses new media as a way of defending her own practice and the practice of others, undermined by their critics. Again an example of how the installation can be at once the medium and the defence strategy. Her work is a hybrid of video, sculpture and architecture yet defies categorisation itself. Her installations are not illusion – they do not hide the apparatus, but then perhaps technical apparatus has in fact become invisible to us anyway. Our brains are so conditioned to filter simultaneous images, to select and pull our own relevancies from every moment, perhaps to hide the apparatus would be a way of highlighting it. Beatriz Colominia wrote in The Art of Projection that, “the idea of the single image commanding our attention has faded away. It seems as if we need to be distracted in order to concentrate.” Memory itself has become an act of performance and, as Colominia said, time is memory’s toy, “time is the place where subjectivity is produced.”

So… back to Thater. Where is the memory, the performativity in her installation? With the lack of material disguise the audience morphs into the work itself creating bodily screens and shadows. They are at once the audience and the unknowing performer within her space. Her series entitled, ‘The Best Animals are the Flat Animals’ 1998 were influenced by Alice in Wonderland. Alice encounters 3D animals that morph into 2D playing cards. It is representative perhaps of how people experience nature, or rather, that they think they are experiencing it at all. A changing landscape for the viewer to move through where nothing is stationary, nothing is tangible. More of a comment on our ability to push out the technical details, the price we pay for the lure of absorption.

“Video installation offers a space where intention and judgement of beauty finally separate.” Instead it is up to the viewer to play the part.

www.thaterstudio.com