1999

Enactment 1999

Alex Gawronski: Enactment, 1999

‘S-Hot’, Artspace Sydney; curated by Nick Tsoutas

(60 x speakers + aluminium housings, speaker cable, cassette deck + loop tape – crowd cheering – amplifier, video monitor, VHS player + video loop – thronging crowd from ‘October’ by Sergei Eisenstein)

The gallery is presented here as the of site of a performative enactment. Today, more than ever, the spectacle of art habitually replaces practice conceived as political. Here, the spectacle staged is comprised of borrowed images of impending revolution at the dawning of modernity. Now the revolution is implied to be ultimately more formal and figurative than genuinely political. Perpetually repeated celebratory cheers unite with footage of political subjugation and the footsteps of the distanced, contemplative gallery viewer.

Decoy 1999

Alex Gawronski: Decoy, 1999

200 Gertrude St, Fitzroy Melbourne

(MDF, scale model train, micro video camera, transformer, switches, TV monitor, paint)

The work cites the historic interconnection between the contraction of space resulting from the advent of high-speed travel and the similar contraction of time enacted via the cinema. The installation specifically references the Lumiere brothers’ 1896 film, ‘L’arrivée d’un train à La Ciotat’ that famously cleared cinemas when it was first shown as audiences attempted to flee their (virtual) deaths, the train speeding apparently straight at them. In terms of this piece, the video image of the replica engine speeding towards the miniature camera functions ultimately as a decoy for an external audience who remain fixated with the virtuality of televisual motion over and above its physical source. No longer fear-inducing, the advent of digitization and its attendant miniaturization has meant that space has become progressively compressed and the illusion of reality predominant.

Headheight 1999