John Gerrard, Animated Scene

John Gerrard’s Animated Scene was what impressed me most by far at this year’s Venice Biennale.

The setting wasn’t bad either – in a warehouse on an island where water buses only do request stops.

Three animated landscapes played on three large screens – created in Realtime, an animation software more usually associated with computer games, using Gerrard’s own photographic and video documentation of the real world. They  unfold in real time themselves – over twenty four hours, 365 days a year. So mid-morning in Venice, set to Texas time, it was night time and dark, though, just like in the real world, as my eyes adjusted, the stars came out.

It’s stunning, affecting and considered work, reflecting on landscape, technology, and how we understand the world, and our place in it. Emphatically contemporary, and – in a sense, literally – eternal.

And haunting.

There are extracts on the project website and more on the project at:

http://www.whitewallmag.com/2009/07/02/john-gerrard-animated-scene/

http://www.johngerrard.net/

http://hirshhorn.si.edu/exhibitions/view.asp?key=21&subkey=411

Author: Gary Thomas, Editor of APEngine.