Not Yet Titled (Magic Circle) (exh. as if at 80WSE Gallery)
Not Yet Titled (exh. as if at 80WSE Gallery)
"The Wicker Man" trailer (cover) ~ 2'50"
and Redoubt (Everybody Knows This is Nowhere) cover ~ 5'28"
w/ new soundtrack "Magic Circle" (vibraphone + timpani + bells & chimes) ~ 11'05"
Noah Travis Phillips presents a hybrid artwork in the form of two video works as a single artwork under the meta-umbrella of a new soundtrack and unique installation.
This new synthesis is presented as (though) part of a larger group show. - - - focusing on themes of ____________, ___________________, and __________.
Two of Noah’s video works (Redoubt (Everybody Knows This is Nowhere) Cover and “The Wicker Man” Trailer Cover are presented, though in a muted form and voiced instead by a new soundtrack, titled: Magic Circle Demo (Vibraphone, Timpani, Bells & Chimes). The videos are projected onto a wall at such a height that viewer shadows and silhouettes often disrupt the image space, while the soundtrack plays from a single home theater system speaker posed oblique to the video projection.
Both videos act as anthropocene reflections. Redoubt (Everybody Knows This is Nowhere) Cover is a cover of a collection of excerpts from a 2019 Matthew Barney film and exhibition. Barney’s work is about a wolf hunt, intertwining the theme of the hunt with those of mythology and artistic creation.
Noah’s cover/subversion of the piece also introduces themes of the posthuman, other- & more- than-human perspectives, multiple time-scales, simultaneous irreconcilability, the sublime, the feminine, mythic interfaces with nature, and reiterates themes of mythology and artistic creation. “The Wicker Man” Trailer Cover is an experiment in dialogue and working with a media artifact as a substrate. This cover retains much of the original and instead navigates an awkward, excited, and multi-faceted conversation through this rough montage. Phillips’ cover was made during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic and forwards a literal but also cinematic shadowiness, that echoes the possibility of embracing one’s darkness (where it points a way toward alternatives to dominant social and religious hegemonies). Viewing the piece now also echoes a feeling of nature and natural belief systems under stress (especially as a consequence of groups seeming to try to destroy the prospects for organized human life on Earth – but maybe this is reading to far into the artist’s oeuvre).
(The unfolding pentagram repeats in these two videos,
and the five-fold format likewise appears in the soundtrack).
Noah’s artwork enacts the idea of the cover on two levels - one as a literal covering of the visuals and audio of the video, and in the sense of a cover song (cover version, remake, revival, or simply cover) as a new performance by someone other than the original composer.
The soundtrack (Magic Circle Demo (Vibraphone, Timpani, Bells & Chimes)) pulls from a range of sources and is a collage of resolutions/qualities, recording techniques, and audial aesthetics. Throughout, under- & over- tones coalesce in moiré patterns and (dis)harmonic resonances – the voices sometimes argue and sometimes perform a chorus (like the tragedy/ies of the classics). By being broadcast through a single home theater system speaker the multiplicity of voices seem to be spoken from a singular source and somehow feels like a stand-in for the artist themself.
Phillips’ format foregrounds the complexities in dialogue and communication, particularly over historical, generational, and other distances, and highlights the ways that recontextualization leads to other meaning(s), even re-meaning. Their artwork often explores the creative potentials of negation, disruption, simultaneity and complexity.
(as if) part of
not yet titled (group) exhibition
at 80WSE Gallery
projection on wall and
soundtrack (mono home theater speaker)
dimensions variable
certain sonic and visual materialities collide, as video(s) and audio play on differently timed loops, moving in and out of entanglement(s) and synchronicities...
a single (monophonic) home theater audio system speaker and a single video projection playing two videos made during the 2020 global pandemic the floor in front of the projection is shined and polished behind to reflect the video