INfinity loop (2019)

Infinity loop (2019)

This work was developed in response to the group show Divergence, and exhibited at Assembly Point - City of Melbourne Creative Spaces, Melbourne in 2019. It was awarded the RMIT creative funding grant in 2019.

Exploring perceived realities of time and space through digital technology and installation. A divergent series is an infinite series. Kennedy creates a physical version of an infinite digital loop using printed film frames and mirrors. Using digital technology to create an infinite collection of visual data that manifests in real space.  

Fifty film stills from a short selfie video are printed out on transparent acetate and placed horizontally between two one-way and two-way perspex mirrors which are suspended from the ceiling. Lighting this from below sits a large rectangular LED globe resting on stainless steel coffee table legs. 

My intention with this work was to make a physical representation of film in a sculptural form. I wanted to mimic the idea of the loop by using an infinity mirror reflecting transparent stills from a 10-second film. This film was from a self-portrait video or ‘selfie’ which added another layer and trajectory to the initial idea, which extends previous works that try to literally object-ify the female body. My main interest lies in inviting the viewer to negotiate the space and shifting the power dynamics of traditional cinema so that the viewer has agency and is not a passive spectator. However, by using the female selfie it now has elements of the ‘political body’ and extends the ideas of previous works (Annamorph series, 2018) I have about the objectification of women in cinema and self-representation in digital culture. 

My main areas of research have been artists/theorists that deal with film time’s divergence from real-time and cinematic tropes/language and expectation. I have been developing my idea of looping and opening up time within a video work and the research I have been doing has allowed me to expand on these ideas.

Pierre Huyghe’s early experiments, firstly with the opening up of time and creating an “open present” (in works such as his billboard series in 1994 and Trajet 1992) to his development of non-linearity in cinematic time and delving into “a time beyond screen-time” (ie. The Third Memory 1999-2000, L’Ellipse 1998) has influenced me to rethink time as fixed/objective and has opened up the possibilities of time/duration/experience as subjective and malleable.

Robert Smithson’s notions of time, and in particular his views of cinematic time and experience. Ideas of the loop and time constructs in cinema “Repetition creates order” and “Temporal continuity conceals the discrete structure of illusion” while also the immersion of memory and the viewing/viewer experience, “we remember cinema as being in it, not of watching a screen”  are observations that are helping to rethink and develop my ideas of viewer experience in relation to cinema.

Additionally, Walden's idea of ‘reflexive mimesis in contemporary visual culture’ has made me rethink an audience position as being passive, and ways of replicating the human experience in film that will provide a jolt if tampered with. Her ideas of ‘the loop’ and what it produces: a pattern of endless repetition that traps us in time and produces an experience called ‘reflexive mimesis’, intrigues me as I love the idea of being trapped in time through repetition. 

This research has developed into a methodology that experiments with ways of physicalising film, so that the person could walk around thus seeing the film stills from different points of view, from active space/agency not just a passive absorbing. The “film camera” is no longer the simulacrum of the human experience, the viewer is having the human experience themselves. I am interested in the idea of the loop and repetition causing the viewer to be trapped in time, but when physical, the viewer can traverse and access the time of the film, perhaps trapping the film itself instead. Theories of time in film being malleable and expanding in non-linear ways (Huyghe, Marclay); the human experience of film (Barthes, Smithson); the mimicry and re-creation of this (Dixon, Kawin, Walden); the dichotomy between the real and the virtual (Huyghe, Trecartin); and breaking the passivity of the viewer (Dixon, Seers). ‘Technology playing the viewer’ has become an underlying intention in my work, trying to recreate the viewers’ lived vs cinematic/screen experience and experimenting with these multifaceted spaces.  

This work actualised my research into modern feminist theory and objectification theory - especially relating to film, digital and “selfie” culture.  Amy Shields Dobson's exploration of the hypocrisy of the gendered selfie and the problematic nature of this culture. Barbara Fredrickson & Tomi-Ann Roberts ideas generated from Objectification theory, the experiential consequences of being a female in a culture that sexually objectifies the female body.   The ideas from ’Virtual Normality: The female gaze in the age of the internet’ are incredible as a starting point, theorising the post- feminine power dynamics of looking in post-internet, while also examining the works of great female writers/artists June Calypso, Leah Schrager, Katherine Wessling, Zanele Mutioli, Rockwitz. Devising the Idea of the  “Looped gaze” - the feeling of attraction and alienation when seeing yourself through your image in the social media age; the politics of the selfie - Identity, sexuality and femininity via the body - bodies over which the author has total control - the body as material; and the power of the self-directed camera “the female gaze has an urgent task to assert the nuances of the female experience through visibility, according to the aphorism of the social media age: I am seen, therefore I am.” 

So what is a viewers role now in digital space - one of passive viewing or one of  self-representation?  The screen has become more-so the “two-way mirror” -  the same screen that we look at looks at us.  I would like to further develop and explore the theories of traditional cinema and feminist and post-feminist theory in the digital age.