VIDEOS 1999-93 | Van McElwee

CONFLUENCE

A complex editing score is applied to images and sounds gathered by a video camera moving through crowded places: a market in Cairo, a carnival in St. Louis, commuters in Tokyo and a funeral in Benares.

LUXOR

Luxor, Egypt, meets Luxor, Las Vegas, calling into question the nature of reality through a meltdown of the real and the replica.

RADIO ISLAND

In Buddhist architecture, the pagoda symbolizes Nirvana, the state of enlightenment. In Radio Island, this metaphor is expanded to include the entire built environment and the whole of ordinary consciousness.

TRANSFINITE LOOPS

Transfinite Loops is a reflection on the mind's tendency to create metaphysical order in the face of chaos. The piece is both a model and a metaphor for that process.

SPACE SPLICE

Space Splice is a form of conceptual architecture that could only be realized in video. Forward motion and edits connect interior volumes shot in The United States, Europe, and India.

FOLDED FOLLIES

FOLDED FOLLIES is an improvisation on Bernard Tschumi’s deconstructionist follies at Parc La Villette in Paris.

FRAGMENTS OF INDIA

The mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote "a temple is a landscape of the soul." Fragments Of India explores this potential in the realm of video.

BINDU

This piece embodies nested levels of form, content and abstraction. Visual fragments of the world come and go as packets of visual energy infused with the sound of the ocean.