ROMALUX In and about Andrew King and Angela Silver’s ROMALUX, executed in and about Rome over in 2003 and 2004, lurks the figure of German philosopher Walter Benjamin. From 1927 until his death in 1940, Benjamin worked assiduously on his Arcades Project, an unfinished monumental study of nineteenth century Paris.
Benjamin’s extant work exists as a collection of written fragments and quotations from diverse historical, literary and political sources gathered together under general themes in a series of convolutes that range from such topics as fashion, theories of knowledge and progress to iron construction, Karl Marx and Victor Hugo. Susan Buck-Morss observes that Benjamin employed the basic framework for his methodological approach to the Arcades Project in his 1925 essay, Naples in which «the images are the phenomena – buildings, human gestures, spatial arrangements are ‘read’ as a language in which a historical transient truth (and the truth of historical transiency) is expressed concretely, and the city’s social
formation becomes legible within perceived experience.»
Benjamin’s images of Naples stand as collections of «objective expressions» rather than mere «subjective impressions» - likewise King and Silver’s shortish video images (1 to 30 seconds in duration) of Rome function similarly.
- Gregory Elgstrand
MOTELIZATION Architect Andrew King and artist Angela Silver have produced a video from scenes shot during a trip down highway 20, from Montreal to New Brunswick. The work takes the driver’s fragmented point of view to create a fast-paced itinerary. The videographic montage of ever-changing rhythm reveals a world constructed specially for the car driver—as evinced by the loud motel signs and the conspicuously modern architecture.
In general, the works comprising the exhibition project testify to the individual experience afforded by motels—the quick glance of a driver seeking a bed for the night, vague recollections still lodged in memory, some poignant drama unfolding behind closed doors. . . the motel occupies a troubling zone in North American consciousness. A sense of immanent death seems to inhabit some of the objects and images collected in exhibition space.
- Geneviève Chevalier
Piranesia Remix | Andrew Chung Building on the explorations and cinematic framework of AKA/Angela Silver, whose constructions were defined through glances, fragments and space, this remix is an approach to a collection of foreign memories - glances, from « another ». Whereas the periphery of the city is explored in ROMALUX and MOTELIZATION, which fully involved the participants within the actual physical realm of the lens, this remix by Andrew Chung is an exploratory composition of the memories of the 'else'; like Giovanni Battista Piranesi's sketches of Rome, the cinematic fragments of ROMALUX and MOTELIZATION as handled by an 'outsider' invents a fictional reality of cinematic experiences - missing parts, to catch the design of the original architect.
"The remains of Rome kindled Piranesi's enthusiasm. He was able to faithfully imitate the actual remains of a fabric; his invention in catching the design of the original architect provided the missing parts; his masterful skill at engraving introduced groups of vases, altars, tombs that were absent in reality; and his broad and scientific distribution of light and shade completed the picture, creating a striking effect from the whole view."