ABIGAIL SEVERANCE
EYE WITNESS
installation | 12 min | 2010 | digital video
Three intimate experiments investigating an art-making process through a dialogue of movement between the body and the frame, with durational artist Julie Tolentino.
In 2014, Evidence, the first section of Eye Witness, was commissioned for Visual AIDS Alternate Endings: A Day Without Art 25th Anniversary. This short program screened at over 50 international galleries and museums, including MOCA LA, Studio Museum of Harlem and New Museum, NY. [ART FORUM feature here.]
As a filmmaker (Severance) and a durational artist (Tolentino) in conversation, we are curious about the affinities and contrasts in our language and its products. While both body and camera can articulate themselves as material evidence or fabricated stories, the camera’s frame often implies fiction, and the immediacy of the body tends to convey authenticity. In our three micro-experiments – i: incarnate witness, ii: material and iii: evidence – we use rehearsal, live performance and improvisation to investigate this slippery exchange between the choices of the frame and the phenomenology of movement. In the process, our language subsides and the frame both anticipates and dreads the arrival of the body.
COLLABORATORS
concept and direction > Abigail Severance + Julie Tolentino
movement design > Julie Tolentino
cinematography and editing > Abigail Severance
music > Julie Fowells/F100, Carter Tutti, Velma, Christian Blumberg
props > Stosh Fila
sound design and mix > Kadet Kuhne
post-production > J.R. Hughto, Ki Jin Kim
funding and support > CalArts, Steakhaus Productions, Studio 528
SCREENINGS [selected]
MOCA, Los Angeles
Studio Museum in Harlem
New Museum, New York
Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas
Sullivan Galleries at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh
SVA Theatre, New York
Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies
V-tape, Toronto
Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, Virginia
New School, New York
Queens Museum, New York
Brooklyn Museum, New York
University of Colorado Art Museum, Boulder
The Nightingale, Chicago
Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Fort Worth, Texas
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas
Space Debris Art, Istanbul, Turkey
Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee
ARTSPACE, Peterborough, Ontario
Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, Oregon
St. Louis Contemporary Art Museum, Missouri
Transformer, Washington, DC
performance s p a c e, London
Phyllis Stein Art, Los Angeles