“Parallel” (work in progress) tells the story of the fissure–the modes of blindness and longing, of not seeing and being unseen, of being together yet also apart–at the heart of an intimate exchange. The installation is constructed of an elongated strip of portraits which can be viewed from both front and back. On either side of the installation are displayed close-up faces of a range of individuals. Each of the individuals stares at a parallel figure sitting across from them, their back to the camera. The parallel figure’s face is visible from the reverse side of the installation, as is the back of the person we saw on the front side.
Beyond the more immediate scene of the gaze exchange between the figures, we can see, through cracks in the wall behind them, a hint of an open landscape.
At an almost undetectable speed, the two rows of portraits–those who are facing us and those who are not–drift along, and then off of the edge of the screen. New pairs continue to slip in endlessly.
The pace of the rows’ drift (front and back), however, is slightly mismatched. This gap in the rate of their movement results in a subtle dissonance: the parallel figures slip away from each other as well as away from us. As they drift, they intermittently obscure the individuals they face. Short texts–segments of online messages written to an unknown other–are, at irregular intervals, read out loud by one of the visible characters. The same text might be performed by different people. Several distinct texts might be read by a few characters at once. The link between who we see and the story we associate with them is, thus, like their image, unsettled, interrupted and displaced.
Biography
An experimental documentary maker for over twenty years, Tirtza Even has produced work which ranges from feature-length documentaries to multi-channel installation and interactive video work, and which, relying on almost imperceptible digital manipulation of slow and extended moments, aims to depict the less overt manifestations of complex, and at times extreme, social/political dynamics in specific locations (e.g. Palestine, Turkey, Spain, the U.S. and Germany, among others).
Even’s work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, NY, at the Whitney Biennial, the Johannesburg Biennial, as well as in many galleries, museums and festivals in the U.S., Canada and Europe, including Doc Fortnight at MoMA, NY, Rotterdam Film Festival, RIDM Film Festival, Montreal, New York Video Festival, Lincoln Center.
Tirtza Even has won numerous grants and awards, including 3ARTs Visual Arts and Next Level Awards, Fledgling Distribution Fund, Artadia Award, Media Arts Award, the Jerome Foundation, Individual Artists Program Awards, NYSCA, and many others; and has been purchased for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (NY) and the Jewish Museum (NY) among others. Even has been an invited guest at many conferences and university programs, including the Whitney Museum Seminar series, the Digital Flaherty Seminar, Open Doc Lab at MIT, SXSW Interactive Conference, Art Pace annual panel, ACM Multimedia and others. Her work is distributed by Heure Exquise, France and Video Data Bank (VDB). Even is Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Film, Video, New Media, and Animation department.
