Jordan Crandall: Künstlergespräch und Live-Performance
The Edith Russ House for Media Art has become a film set for the duration of the exhibition, where Crandall worked with participants in a workshop he led on his new video installation. Concept of the new work, process and results of the workshop are presented in the upper part of the exhibition house. "Trigger" shows two soldiers chasing and targeting each other. The camera becomes a weapon and "Trigger" - the trigger, the release - a metaphor for the impulse that triggers both the concrete action, the shot, and more indifferent and individually occupied emotions and memories.
In the lower exhibition space, a selection from the six-part video series "Drive" is shown. While the preliminary work for "Trigger" will be characterized by a raw, "work in progress" aesthetic, "Drive" has the slick, cool aesthetic that ultimately characterizes the final result of "Trigger" and Crandall's work.
Crandall's work has startlingly concrete references to the current political situation. 'Armed Vision', a term coined by Jordan Crandall himself, describes the subject matter of his video installations very impressively. Crandall assumes that our ways of seeing are becoming more and more 'militarized'. War images and reports, dragnets and surveillance monitors everywhere not only satisfy voyeurism, but also increase the acceptance of surveillance and control by third parties.
Military technologies play just as large a role in this development as the media. The images from surveillance and night-vision cameras, from hidden cameras and, above all, the footage from theaters of war - recorded with highly specialized military technologies - determine our everyday lives and give us a feeling of security and control over a world that has become unmanageable. Out of this feeling develops a joy and pleasure in combat, which appears promising due to specialized technologies and is therefore perceived as a joy and pleasure in success. This struggle is conceivable in many varieties: the 'struggle against terror', the struggle of the sexes and the inner struggle with/against oneself.
Jordan Crandall: "Heatseeking (Course Track)," 1999-2000
"Quivering with tension, flesh pressed against metal, the movements of the combat apparatus flow through the body like film through a projector. Restrained breaths, accelerated heartbeat, and the slight vibration of the finger on the trigger mingle with the staccato of the celluloid driven by the machine. One eye transfixed on the viewfinder, a body paused in motion, an image target moving through the field of view. What is moving, how is it moving, how can this movement be tracked, interrupted, recorded, represented? All moving elements are synchronized in the explosive moment of the shooting. A target-object that must be seen, rescued, eliminated in the process of division: me/you, we/them, here/there. Body and machine meet at the trigger and await the explosive act of their engagement. Seeing-Naming-Firing. Perception ordered, positions and boundaries established, movements and forms contoured. A victim-image between perception, technology and the evasive movements of the body."