ALISA SWINDELL, Associate Curator of Photography
Hood Quarterly, fall 2024
The exhibition A Fragile Force: Meditations on Water is comprised of two single-channel video artworks and an artist's book: Jennifer Moller's 2009 video and book titled Seas, and Amy Globus's 2004 video titled Electric Sheep. Video art first developed in the 1960s when personal portable equipment made the medium available to individuals outside of the major media outlets. This equipment's relative affordability and ease of use allowed artists to create innovative works that challenged the idea of "moving pictures," usually forgoing narrative structure in favor of an exploration of the specificities of the medium's aesthetics, including sound effects, repetition, visual collage, and pacing. These works invite viewers to spend as much or as little time as they like, to meditate on the imagery, to immerse themselves in the installation.
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In Seas, Jennifer Moller stood on the coast of Cape Cod in winter filming the ice-crusted ocean water as it moved toward her and away again. Displayed across a wall of the gallery, the mesmerizing sight and sound of the water's movement invites viewers to embrace this wintry moment. Amy Globus's video, in contrast, follows an octopus entertaining himself by exploring several differently shaped tanks, as they are naturally curious and like to explore a variety of spaces. Globus took her title from the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. In the novel, set in an imagined future, people prize the rare opportunity to have a "real" animal as a pet out of a newfound respect for non-human, living creatures and as a way to develop their empathy. In her video work, Globus allows us to watch the curious and active octopus, his suckers moving against the glass of the tanks while a soundtrack of Emmylou Harris plays along. Both videos ask us to let what is above and below the water move us by revealing it in an unexpected way.
This exhibition is organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, and generously supported by the Charles Gilman Family Endowment.