THE EXPANDED MOMENT

THE EXPANDED MOMENT

The Art Assignments, Entry One

January 2017

I may not have art, but I sure have snow.

Lots and lots of snow.

Since I’ve been living up in the woods of New Hampshire, opportunities for gallerying going have been a bit sparse. The mountains more than make up for their lack of cool openings and blockbuster exhibitions, of course, and I’m happy to be tucked away into winter (at least for a few months). I mean, just now, I’m sitting writing at a wide, bright window watching snowflakes gently fall onto a mostly frozen river, the silhouettes of the hills dark against the grey sky. It’s a scene and an atmosphere that you just don’t get in the centre of London.

But still, my location has meant that its been some time since I’ve stepped foot in a museum. While you can trust that my exhibition ‘to do list’ for when I return to the UK in March has gotten very long, I’ve tried to find some ways to channel my cravings for art in a more immediate ways, ways that don’t just involve endlessly refreshing Art Forum and Frieze and Art News thinking about all the great art I’m missing. For a start, I’ve been reading just about as many books as I can get my hands (hopefully the subject of a future post!). 

I’ve also been taking a more hands on approach, however, and I’ve finally started doing something that I’ve planned to make a part of this blog since I started it— Art Assignments. For those who don’t know The Art Assignment, it’s a PBS programme on youtube hosted by Sarah Urist Green, a former curator at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. In the show, Sarah interviews artists, discussing their practice and contextualising their output. The artists then in turn give the viewers an ‘assignment,’ kind of like a ‘Do It.’ They range hugely from print making to collaborative efforts to projects based on chance to conceptual photography. I’ve always religiously watched their videos— and I even did a few right when they first started the channel— but I’ve rarely completed the ‘homework.’ 

The Art Assignment recently announced that they’re taking a break from new assignments in order to focus on more educational videos (like their ‘The Case For’ videos), and now that more assignments have stopped rolling it, I’ve decided that these few months would be a great time to try to do some catching up. 

After much anguished deliberation, I decided to try one of the assignments that has stuck with me the most since it was posted in 2014— “The Expanded Moment” by Chicago based artist Jan Tichy. The assignment is based off the premise of his series “Changing Chicago” and asks the viewers to do the following:

1.  Find a place with the potential for visual movement
2.  Place your video camera on or attach it to a stable object
3. Record at least 2 minutes without moving the camera (and no sound!)

I’ve actually tried to do this assignment a few times before, but I’ve always decided to do it spontaneously, when a stable object is no where to be found, and I’ve never successfully completed it (I should note here that even this time, I didn't completely nail 'staple object.' I had to film on my iPhone and thus the final film is ever so slightly wobbly). As a lover of photography, it’s really no surprise to my as to why I’ve returned to this particular assignment time and again. As they discuss in the video, it’s really contrary to the whole notion of a ‘decisive moment’ and the idea that a photograph can only represent an instant. While the expanded moment is still a selected segment of time, it offers contextualisation, invites chance, plays on the role as photographer of observer.

The observation was one of the things I really took away from the assignment. The whole day I was out filming, I felt myself noticing the smallest details, appreciating the slight movement of the trees, seeing the paths that people chose as they moved among the snow and trees. There was also an agonising level of passivity. There is the active, decisive moment— picking the location, framing the shot. But then, there is passivity. You must stick with your chosen location for two minutes. While I was filming, I constantly felt my eyes straying to something else, out of frame, and wishing that I could’ve captured that as well. It was a strange experience. In the moment, I felt so aware of the full landscape, the totality of the picture but I also felt so keenly tuned in to the detail that I had chosen. It’s a dialect, the partial out of the whole, that I now realise is obviously a huge part of photography in general (as is the feeling of passivity). It’s always been there when I’m out shooting with my film cameras, seeing both the scene and the photograph at once, but it wasn’t until I was forced to sit and contemplate it in silence for two minutes that it really became apparent. 

So with much preamble, here’s what I came up with. It’s a pretty accurate reflection of where I’m living right now, and to me, it captures what I love about living in the woods. Time seems so expanded here, and the subtle movements are so heightened, so alive. I look up at the slow roll of the clouds and remember the slow turn of the Earth. That day, the mountains were packed in with a thick, dense fog. Things disappeared in seconds. But even standing in the haze, I knew that a break in the clouds was sure to come soon and that when it did, that I’d see a petrifying blue sky, snow capped mountains stretching out as far as I can see. Weather never lasts long in the mountains. Things are always changing. 

expanded moment from Kaitlyn Kane on Vimeo.

(Having now seen the quality of this video in full screen, I regret leaving my digital camera in the UK. Hold your phone in portrait you amateur!)

I highly encourage you all to check out this and other assignments over on the Art Assignment’s website! While I’m certainly no artist and while I have no delusions about the quality of my creations, these projects always remind me that making is always worth while. More, you learn so much about artists in particular and the world in general by doing, by getting out of your routine and your headspace and trying something new. 

Next on my list? I’m thinking perhaps Constructed Landscape or maybe Emotional Furniture. What about you?