On display at Studio 1469 in Washington DC through July 8th, 2017, In the Blink of an Eye: Faith is an installation piece assembled in my friend Faith Flanagan’s memory. It shares the gallery with works by nearly two dozen other artists as part of a memorial exhibition titled, In the Eye of Faith Flanagan.
With a footprint of about 15″ x 15″ x 36″ (46″ with the laptop open) the laptop atop the custom pedestal displays a 2 minute, 20 second audio-video loop, screening at this exhibition for the first time. This specific device was chosen because it was used over the past few years to review work in-progress with Faith and was used last fall to project photos from Faith’s life at her memorial gathering.
Although it returned from that event “broken,” the laptop can still play video, though it struggles to do so. For me, that struggle has a kind-of perfectly meaningful quality to it and was a fitting way to share this particular composition; that despite whatever hurdles and challenges life throws us, art must go on.
The complete installation piece: laptop, video, and pedestal, form the entire work. In this form, and with all these parts, it is an edition of one. The video clip above shows a short excerpt (video portion only) of the full installation loop and simulates the actual performance of the file used on the “hobbled” installation device. For comparison, if you like, the same clip is displayed at its original 24 frames per second here.
Washington Post’s Mark Jenkins review of “The Eye of Faith Flanagan”
