People-watching - we all do it. But in this simple act of self-indulgence, there are the occasional awkward moments when the people we are watching notice.
That is the theme of video artist Peter Bogers' recent video projection piece "Shared Moments." It, along with several additional works, is on display in the Dutch artist's American debut exhibition at Wood Street Galleries, Downtown.
"Usually they have some sort of suspicion that they are being filmed," Bogers says about the subjects in "Shared Moments," a large-scale video work that includes people sitting in public squares, coffee shops and train stations in Budapest; paragliders in France; and the artist's daughter sleeping in the middle of the night. Bogers secretly filmed each subject with a micro-DVD recorder, waiting for the exact moment when they noticed that he and his camera were watching.
"At some point, they check my camera," Bogers says. "They don't know if it is running or not, but they know it is there."
It is at those moments that Bogers has slowed down the resultant video fragments and accompanying audio that comprises "Shared Moments." Shown in multiples of three, six and 12 images along the back wall of the 60-foot-long gallery on the second floor, the effect is startling when you realize that all of the people the artist has videotaped are all of a sudden looking at you.
Bogers captured all the video fragments in just a few days in 1999. Later, in his studio in Amsterdam, he manipulated each of them so that, regardless of how long each person looked at Bogers' camera, all of their returned glances would last the same amount of time in the piece.
To further aid the effect, Bogers added time codes at the bottom of each video clip and, in a few - most notably at the train station - he has added audio beeps at the precise moment when the subjects glance at the camera, which brings an element of humor to the piece.
Cumulatively, all of these elements create a real sense of space and time, but in reality the only "shared moment" taking place here is between video image and viewer.
In his art, Bogers uses video like a sketchpad, capturing raw material with which he will later review and determine its use. Oftentimes, these images take on special meaning for the artist, and he will save and reuse them over time as he has in smaller, earlier works on the same floor.
In "Portrait" (1991), Bogers has used a favorite video image he made 15 years ago of himself in profile, slowly pushing saliva through a bent tube so that it drips into his eye. Displayed on a small monitor that the artist has housed in a glass display case, the looped image can be seen distorted through thick convex lenses that the artist has placed on one end.
In another piece, "Sacrifice" (1994), a video loop of the artist's mouth being filled up with water plays, again on a small monitor behind thick lenses.
The backdrop to this piece is a large black-and-white photo of the artist lying in a bathtub as he recorded the video. In many ways, that image provides a mental backdrop for Bogers' second large-scale video projection work, which is contained in the third-floor gallery.
Also featuring the artist submerged in water, the piece is titled "Play-Rev-Play" (1999), because, Bogers says, "It refers to the technique - how it is made."
An installation, the piece comprises three large semi-transparent screens that Bogers has strategically hung in the 30- by 60-foot gallery. On the screens are projected partial images of himself - in particular his head, a hand and a foot - videotaped while submerged in water.
Not knowing whether he is drowning, hiding or shutting out the world, the viewer is surprised when - all at once - the body breaks the surface of the water.
"The person comes up, then the video is frozen and played backwards in reverse slowly and the sound goes along with it," Bogers says.
Hovering at the edge of abstraction, the suspended video images have a fragile, vulnerable aspect. Over time, they persist like an obsession, or a healing wound, where periods of relative calm are suddenly disrupted.
In Bogers' work, video projection is no longer simply a mode of representation. He has transformed it into a fluid and synthetic medium that transports the viewer to a place between time and space where reality is slowed and examined.
The exhibition is a remarkable debut for an artist who, no doubt, will not go unnoticed.
| 'Shared Moments: The Video Art of Peter Bogers' |
