Vampyr
Mixed media sculptural installation w/ video
In Vampyr, a performance-based video installation framed as a futuristic set, the classic seduction between the vampire and victim is endlessly repeated. Twin video projections, backlit on hanging diffusion screens, reference portraiture as well as "futuristic" technologies such as holography. The projections recapture the stereotypical and camp-laden shots and gestures of the vampire film -the vampire leans in to sink its fangs, the victim recoils- and borrows specifically from the tropes and lighting styles of silent 1920's gothic cinema. Sculptural elements include a large transparent plastic sphere and mountain range in a minimalist treatment of the landscape of the gothic and the sublime, the sublime and the ridiculous.
Attempting to unclutter the narrative of the vampire through simplification of gesture and set, the "undead" flatness of video itself enhances the absurdist reduction of the classic vampire film. The 60's/70's decor minimalism of the "set," with its semi-holographic figures enacting the timeless vampire myth, produce that always ancient quality of the future, while suggesting a peculiar, ambivalent attitude toward technology as the device both designed to exterminate the undead, yet too ill-equipped to interrupt the processes the vampire's parasitism sets in motion.
Vampyr combines a comedic irony with the nevertheless still charged figure of the vampire, who perennially stands in for the racial, cultural and sexual other, any number of diverse parasitic oppressions, and capital itself.
Vampyr was exhibited at the Helen Pitt Gallery in Vancouver British Columbia in July 2002
Click here for installation documentation
