One enters
The Scrap Exchange, a labyrinth collection of wires, mirrors, books, scraps, fabric, test tubes, almost any item you could imagine.
The Scrap Exchange is a place where value is given to scraps - throwaways gathered, presented and fashioned for sale, then chosen by a shopper for subsequent reuse. The space creates an extraordinary experience in what would might seem the most mundane. People who shop enter a realm of discovery, creation, innovation to use and reuse, matching the quotidian with the creative.
In this context I have embedded several audio visual elements on the shelves in different sections of the "store." One may stumble upon them, one may not, as they are embedded with other audio visual items that are actually for sale, the shopper may not know that the elements of the work are not for sale, creating the potential for a kind of unexpected happening. The entire space, including the included the added audio visual elements offers the viewer the chance to become aware that something out of the ordinary is at work, maybe a piece of art on the shelf, maybe an unedited film, maybe a cross reference of song to borrowed film, maybe a line that angers, incites or rings true. Or maybe not.
In this case, each of the added elements relates to September 11, 2001. Are the visitors to the space, in this mode of activity,even in the smallest way, undermining the kinds of behaviors that lead to such tragedies?
The audio visual elements themselves offer an experience in their own right. I am presenting a borrowed song, raw footage that I shot on September 12th, 2001 on the streets of Manhattan and a two composed video works that have played as elements in other installations that I have created. Each has a different feel, like the extreme and contradictory feelings of the day, offering comfort, defiance, anger, the desire to act, sadness...
As a way of considering
and remembering the events of September 11th, 2001 and the cycles of
history into which we are born, you may find audio and video as you venture
through the Scrap Exchange.
The title of this site
specific presentation is Retrospective Inference. The work is by Leon Grodski de Barrera and is tailored to
the experience of the Scrap Exchange.
The work includes:
-- The Scrap Exchange, its shelves, barrels, collections, pathways,
inciting one to meander, as a body and in the mind, and to create and
re-create.
-- Swift Nude _____, (video loop) by Leon Grodski de
Barrera.
-- Raw Footage, (video
app. 40 min) Walking in NYC, September 11 & 12, 2001shot by Leon Grodski de Barrera
-- Great Balls of Fire, (video 6:30) by Leon Grodski de Barrera,
co-edited & co-produced with Pearl Gluck, featuring James E. Jones
-- Boeing 737, (audio 2:40) a song by the Low Anthem
