Jordan Crandall: Trigger Project

Opening: Saturday, April 6, 2002, 20 Uhr
Exhibition Dates: April 7 – June 9, 2002

Oldenburg, Germany

March 2002

The artist and media theorist Jordan Crandall uses recent visual devices such as DVD, nightvision cameras and other military-derived technology to create what can be considered a new filmic language for video installation series. These works raise questions on surveillance, agency and a physical / psychological tension between viewing and being. During his exhibition Crandall will transform the Media Art Site into a film set to be used by a workshop for the development of Trigger. This dual projection video installation will be pre-filmed on the basis of Crandall’s storybook. During the first week, the visitors can watch the shoot and discuss the procedure with the director. On the basis of the Oldenburg work, Crandall will shoot the final material during April / May in North America. While the workshop is characterized by a rough, ”work in progress” aesthetic, the finished product will be closer to the slick, cool aesthetic of the Drive (1998 – 2000) series, which is also on display here.

”Pulsing with tension, flesh pressed against metal, the routings of the combat device course through the body as the film courses through the projector. Careful breaths, quickening heartbeats, and the small vibrations of the finger mix with the staccato of the gear-driven celluloid. An eye locked on a viewfinder, a body held immobile, an image-target moving across the field of vision. What moves, how does it move, how can that movement be tracked, intercepted, recorded, re-presented? All of the moving elements synchronized in the explosive moment of "getting the shot." A target-object to be seen, saved, eliminated in a process of division: I/you, us/them, here/there. Body and machine meeting in a trigger device, awaiting the explosive act of engagement. Seeing-naming-firing. Perception orchestrated, positions and borders drawn, movements and forms contoured. A victim-picture captured in the routings between perception, technology, and the pacings of the body.” Jordan Crandall on Trigger

From April 7-10 Jordan Crandall will be available to the public during open hours.

May 8 (Wed. before holiday), 8 pm: Video, Voyeurismus und Cocktails:
”Heatseeking”, 2000, USA, 26 Min. Director: Jordan Crandall
”Peeping Tom”, 1960, USA, 101 Min. Director: Michael Powell
Starring Karlheinz Böhm and Moira Shearer.

15,00 Euro: includes 2 Cocktails

The view through night vision or a surveillance camera in Jordan Crandall’s video series ”Heatseeking” peaks the desire to look. Both brutal and seductive, it awakens the senses with a shudder. Crandall also chose the film ”Peeping Tom” as an addition to the exhibition. This brilliant Technicolor film about a murderer who films his victims while they die broke the rules in 1960 to such a degree that it was pulled from the cinemas. Together with the main characters, the viewers can not hide in the darkness as they are placed in the roles of voyeurs and perpetrators.

May 12 (Sunday): International Museum Day

Free Admission; Exhibition tours at: 12 pm and 2 pm

Screening: 3 pm, ”Heatseeking”, 2000, USA, 26 Min. Director: Jordan Crandall

June 1 (Saturday), 8 pm: Artist’s Talk

Crandall presents material from the Oldenburg workshop as well as his North American film shoot.

Exhibition Admission: 2,50/1,50 Euro

Press photos: edith-russ-haus/presse-trigger/