Guarded
video installation for two video projectors, two media players, two-channel audio, rotating platform

“[B]y drawing our awareness to the precarious and transitory nature of our being, Finley and Muse… encourage us to experience our lives to the fullest; to savor small, flickering moments of life and appreciate the beauty we see around us.” —Barbara Morris, Artweek, 2003

For Guarded two video projectors, two DVD decks, and stereo speakers are mounted on a rotating platform that sits in the center of the gallery. As the platform turns, the projectors throw images that follow each other around the opposing walls. Bursts of text (modified from a Red Cross pamphlet entitled “Preparing for the Unexpected”) run through the images, sliding in and out of sight. A child and woman follow each other around the room, a wedding occurs, fires burn, money changes hands, cars are driven. The sound from a date stamp pounding future dates into the wall dominates the score. Little things become menacing, the monumental mundane.

Because one of the two video projections is always behind you, Guarded evokes the eerie sense that the most important events occur behind your back, threatening a catastrophe made more ominous by efforts to prepare for it.

Read the blog posts tagged Guarded.

Project/Exhibition dates

Imaginative Feats Literally Presented: Three Fables for Video Projection, Haverford College, Haverford, PA, 2009
Witnesses, Monuments, Ruins, The Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, Colgate University, Harrison NY, 2009
How Can You Resist?, LA Freewaves Festival, Los Angeles CA, 2004
Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, 2003