Frances Young: Sites of Transition

About

In the spring of 2008 Frances Young hitched a ride across the USA with an all girl rock band, recording her road journey as she went from East to West with a video camera. She later returned to New York to commence a residency at the Experimental Television Center where she re-scanned, colourized, sequenced and further fragmented parts of her video by using early analogue equipment.

The results of Young?s work are a personal re-encountering of landscapes reminiscent of American road movies; and a continual shift between the recorded image, its re- presentation, and the texture of the medium. In ?Black Hills Sequencer?, this flickering shift occurs in the spaces between the movement of windscreen wipers, which slice the image rather like the blink of an eye. ?Wyoming Always? uses the horizontal movement of a CCTV camera scan, simultaneously recording and interrupting the footage and creating a sense of spatio-temporal disjuncture.

Alongside this work, Young will also show 'Oscillate 01', an abstract piece constructed from voltage-controlled video sections that merge as audio-visual parts of a whole. Letting sound lead the direction of its composition, it is as much an audio piece as a video with no seperation between the two.

In the lower space, Young will be showing her work, 'Song of Farewell' (2007), a digital video projection which uses slowed footage of starlings flying to and from a deserted rollercoaster as dusk is falling. The piece moves through a cycle of changing light and plays as a loop- the cyclical looping echoing the physical structure of the rollercoaster and the circular, repetitive flight patterns of the birds. The rhythmic loop of vinyl end-static provides the sound; an ending without end, at times suggestive of the beating of wings or the sound of a heartbeat. Its analogue texture and insistent repetition creates a dialogue with the digital footage, steering the pace and tempo of the piece.