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Accompanied by a musical sound track composed of textures and ambient sounds, Valenza’s multi-screen slide projection more closely resembles expanded cinema practices of the 1970s and 80s than any educational apparatus.
The slides themselves are fragmented images of abstract natural and urban scenes. The composite scenes are implicitly dreamlike, caused in part by a dramatic colouring of the images (a result of the editing process), at once removing any semblance of documentary objectivity or sense of perspective distinctive to its original maker. Together, the sounds and fields of projected imagery take the viewers on a sensory voyage to distant moments and places, but only momentarily. Viewers individual routes through the installation are guided by the constant, altering flow of images, and the capacity of scenes that appear both within and between the images to evoke memories and emotions.
The point of the horizon – the line at which the images meet – continuously shifts, simulating the motion of travel. As the artist explains, ‘They say when you are sea sick, you should look to the horizon as a kind of constant definitive state. If there is no horizon, or the horizon is forever shifting into another landscape, then the only option left is to float and find this place where you are at the whim of your surroundings.’
Text: Sarah Wall
Images: Samuel Hartnett & Danae Valenza