Infinite Melancholy (2003)
By Jordan Wolfson
colour video on DVD with sound 4 min loop Jordan Wolfson's Infinite Melancholy (2003) tempts similar home-baked philosophy. Projected at wall-filling size in a room of its own at the rear of the Kunsthalle's concurrent John Armleder exhibition, Wolfson's video first made its presence felt through its audio track, which suggested that, on opening the door, a local pupil would be seen diligently practising a piano. The aspiring pianist would have been making wobbly progress through the dainty phrases of Rogers and Hammerstein's 'Getting to Know You', from The King and I (1951). Instead, the accompanying vision was of moving at speed over a receding white planar surface defined by rows and rows of identical black letters that spelt out, again and again, 'CHRISTOPHER REEVE'. Immersed in this screen throughout the four-minute computer-generated animation, one would be flying dangerously low, skimming the second 'H', then wrenched upwards above a teeming fabric of now too distant, microfiche-like names. At moments the words flashed past at such a disconcertingly stroboscopic rate that the illusion of moving forward flipped into a sensation of being dragged backwards, as if on a swoopi…
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