steve
roden
book
of seconds, 1996 - 2001
black and white super 8 film.
45 minutes, silent .
exhibitions griffin contemporary gallery los angeles, ca & orange county museum of art as 9' x 12' video projection
for
the ocma press release click here.
book
of seconds
was started on september 2, 1995 and was conceived
as a year long project. every day i shot ten seconds of film. the images
were limited to shadows or light. when the project was completed (september
2, 1996), there were approximately 3,650 seconds (or one hour) of footage,
and a sequence for every day of the year. there are a number of ten second
sequences of total darkness for the days in which i was unable to film,
due to lack of time, weather, etc. the ten second length of each sequence
was calculated personally, rather than with a watch, hence the slightly
different length of each sequence and the actual 40 minute length of the
work.
the
piece deals with the creation of art as an everyday practice. i am interested
in bringing about questions relating to the relationship of making art
to other activities such as diary, prayer, ritual, work, documentation,
etc. what you are seeing is an unedited actual recording of ten seconds
of my visual life for every day of a year. is this process merely a blind
activity as basic as brushing my teeth or eating?, or is it something
more? the process of creating this work, as well as the resulting footage,
is an exploration of the idea that beauty, or inspiration, is not determined
by location, but by vision. in 'letters to a young poet' rilke talks about
the artist being inspired by 'inconsiderable things' and the fact that
an artist should be able to find inspiration anywhere. (to quote madonna
- "beauty's where you find it.") is this work a document of beauty found?,
or does it show only an empty pursuit? is it art because of the dialogue
it generates? or simply because it is presented as such?
i
am also interested in the process of how film is exposed; and in using
the basics of that process, (darkness and light) as the subject matter
of the film. the film refers to itself and to the process of its creation.
the magic and almost alchemical process of how these images are captured
on film exists as both the physical (the actual film), as well as the
symbolic (the images captured).
steve roden 1997
during
the original shooting of the film, the processing lab had ruined aproximately
1/4 of the film (about 3 months of work), and in the winter of 2000 i
worked with the lab and a computer to bring the contrast and the blacks
back into the film (a restoration of sorts, as the lab had destroyed all
of the contrast as light was let into the developing process). thus the
final version of the film really only exists on video and for the installation
it was transferred to dvd and projected on a 9 x 12 foot wall in a room
of total darkness. the film is silent, and is the first filmwork i had
ever made. the super 8 camera that i made the piece with (and all subsequent
films) was a gift from my parents for my 13th birthday.
the
images on the site are from the installation of this film at the orange
county museum of art in the summer of 2001.
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