Between realities: investigating temporal relations between stillness and movement in contemporary artists' lens-based imagery

Abstract

Temporal registers of stillness and movement in lens-based imagery, traditionally defined under the terms of photography and film, are in many ways two faces of the same coin, one representing time as a frozen moment and the other as the passing present. Contemporary imaging techniques allow the two faces to overlap, contort and distort beyond recognition, suggesting that the original function of the two-faced coin is rendered obsolete. This art practice-based research proposes that the coincidence of stillness and movement in contemporary imagery, while emphasizing rather than erasing their singular functions, can produce distinctively unique relations between the media that extend their potential for temporal inquiry. The following research investigates the coin in the process of a toss, when both media are equally in play. Taking the Quadrangle building of NUI Galway, Ireland, as a point of departure for a new body of research material, I compiled an archive of digital photographs and videos over the course of a twelve month period. These images were subsequently used to construct a twenty-minute video installation titled Quad (2013) that served as an essential working case study at the mid-point of the research project. The images slide from stasis to motion and back again thus creating visual rhythms that often provide no discernible separation point between the two temporal states of stillness and movement. My findings contend that the final iteration of my practical research contributes significantly to a growing body of artistic works that utilize contemporary media imaging techniques to produce temporal rhythms of exchange between stillness and movement. Furthermore, these works seek to establish a notably contemplative encounter between the imagery and the spectator. Three related videos, Presence, Return and Landing, form one gallery installation titled Between Realities (2016). The videos negotiate a shared space in which the opposing rhythms of stillness and movement are refracted through one another, and out of which unexpected temporal relations can surface.