BLOG ENTRY #2, At Midway

Name of work: Before the Sun
Date of creation: 2010

Artist: Karthik Pandian

Subject matter: A film screen repeated scenes and sound inside a dark room.
Medium/Media: Video recording, films, dirt, seashell and glass.
Form/Formal qualities: The placements of the film against the two opposite walls are diagonal to each other and on the top view of the dark room the film is being played in a continuous repeated stripe. The size is done big and put inside a dark room.
Content: The color of the sunset and dawn which is set to the mood of the dark room is unique. The images shown in the film is moving from left to right and right to left making motion of the body language. The dirt to the plate form of the film stand is significant to the place of the setting in the film. There are also shells alongside the dirt.
External Information: Filming the setting to the place is in the mountain. The film of the images is people who is or is not aware that they are being filmed, are moving and having fun. The film is screen on both ends of the walls to portray the west and the east of the sun setting and dawn. The sounds are from the taping of the film, it is nothing important to the art itself.

(The sketch on the left is done in process journal, by See Vang on October 4, 2010 in pencil.)

The artwork, Before the Sun at the Midway came forward to me as a negative thought. As I walked into the dark room of sounds that were like a horror haunting on the door, I was frighten by what I was going to see next. I came deeper into the dark and saw the two films on opposite ends being screen and the one to my left was the bright red orange sun, I stared at it without winking. After a while I came to realize that it had human figures and it was moving and the setting to the place reminds me of the native who did farming.

After watching the film and exploring the environment the art was in, I felt that I didn’t like this piece of art. The sound kept bothering me and it just keeps pushing me to think the piece was done to warn someone of a suicide attempt. I felt more focus on what I heard than what I should have seen. But even though it was annoying to hear the sounds it was making, it pulls my curiosity to why the artist didn’t just make the film silence. That would have at least made a different approach, as a positive though about fun and excitement.

http://midwayart.org/exhibitions/10_05_karthik_pandian/