Panoramas and Other Circular Stories

Runs through March 31, Esther M. Klein Art Gallery, University City Science Center, 3701 Market St.

by Amy Strauss

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Published: Feb 28, 2007

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Alarm clocks, traffic lights, electronic train schedules — every minute of every day, you're controlled by time and travel. Where are you going? When? And how?

Roderick Coover, a film and media arts professor at Temple University, uses his background in anthropology to deconstruct humanity's obsession with its own time-sequenced existence. Through "Panoramas and Other Circular Stories," an installation featuring six separate video works, he asks us to consider a reality where time is suspended, reversed or wholly inconsequential.

"It's fundamental to me to see how the mind makes sense of images," says Coover, who suggests looking at works out of context to gain a broader perspective of their meaning.

With the help of the Esther Klein Art Gallery, Coover's videos are presented in three different spaces. Something Happened Only Once is a 21-minute video loop featuring more than 1,000 photographs and accompanied by a soundtrack courtesy of Dutch singer Jodi Gilbert and saxophonist Michael Moore. Filmed in Mexico's Coyocan Plaza, the piece features a team of actors swarming the streets, intermixing with everyday people. Clips of gossiping old men, a mother and her son, a cyclist and, most dramatically, a woman having her purse stolen, are chopped apart and reordered.

For The Theory of Time Here, Coover teamed up with experimental writer Deb Olin Unferth to examine technology's hold on our movements and actions (e.g. obeying traffic signals when crossing the street, or following a set schedule to catch a train). And in Currency, four children's DVD players and screens flicker with one-minute videos developed by Coover and MIT tech writer Nick Montfort. Here, they traded roles: Montfort supplied Coover with a photograph, to which Coover then supplied text. This process continued, neither discussing the basis of pictures or words, until the project was complete. Interestingly, the final product features flipping coins and paper money amid secret signs of Joseph Stalin (a spied "JS" on the front of a dime).

Coover strives to make various mediums (dialect, film, music, words, etc.) work together, with no discernible beginning or end. If the viewer is left questioning what is real and what is staged, what is reality and what is just an illusion, Coover's job is done.

Runs through March 31, Esther M. Klein Art Gallery, University City Science Center, 3701 Market St., 215-966-6188, www.kleinartgallery.org.

 

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