Keep Frozen part three
The exhibition consisted of two chapters. Chapter one was a 48 hours dock-worker performance that was also being filmed as part of the performance and two weeks later chapter two opened as the HD, 14 min 3-channel synchronized immersive mixed-media video installation Labor Move that was being shown on 7 meters high and 4 meters wide screens together with debris from 48-hour performance: plastic straps scattered around the floor, strapping machine, four wooden pallets, 160 Keep Frozen boxes, each filled with 25 kilos made out of wood and sandbag that the performers had used.
Installation view. Each screen was 7 meters high and 4 meter wide. Photo: dotgain
During the days of 8th and 9th of January 2016 a 48-hour dock workers performance took place at Kunstkraftwerk in Leipzig, Germany as part of the Keep Frozen series. Performers were dock workers from the harbor of Reykjavik that had been involved in the making of the documentary film Keep Frozen.
In Reykjavik harbor a group of dock workers work together. The job hasn´t really been mechanized. They have to endure this task using almost only physical power in an endless repetition of movements where they move the boxes from one place to the next until the freezer compartment is empty and the container trucks full and gone away. The workers work without contracts and get paid for how fast they are which means their skills in working as synchronized machine is really put to the test.
Installation view. Photo: dotgain
It was decided early on to use the opportunity of documentation to the fullest and give it a place aside the other works in the Keep Frozen series and take important elements and questions a step further than possible with the narrative cinema documentary. Audiovisual footage was recorded where focus was not only put on abstracting the movements and the sounds and composition of the work taking place but also the immersive qualities of the large space and synchronization between spatial screens of the installation that would be put up in the same space later on.
The outcome was a 3-channel portrait format synchronized video-installation that was exhibited as part of a mixed-media installation together with the debris of the performance (boxes, straps, machinery) in the same space as the performance took place. In space of 12 meter high ceiling and 500 m2 floor size the video installation was immersive with three 7 meters high screens, each 4 meter wide.
3 synchronized stills from Labour Move. DOP: Dennis Helm
Installation view. Photo: dotgain
By approaching the documentation as an art work in itself with its own qualities and possibilities the work entered into a conversation with the narrative cinema documentary Keep Frozen. The relationship between the more narrative structure of a cinema movie with sitting down audiences and the spatial experience of an experimental video-installation was explored to the fullest. The work explores important topic of the medium. The art piece operates on the borders of four artistic/cinematic concepts (re)staging; re-en(act)ment, (re)presentation and (re)production.
Installation view. Photo: dotgain
The work poses questions about the relationships between these concepts and the cinematic reproduction of a spatial performance that in turn is a spatial reproduction of real life events.
What is reality?
What is fiction?
What is re-staging or re-enactment?
How is the documentary a work of an author?
A fiction?
Where is the reality in abstraction?
What happens when the same subject moves between different medium?
How does it effect the representation?
Which part is representation and which not?
What happens?
How does this affect the audiences in a different way?