EXPLODE ME

Single-channel video installation, 2006, VSW gallery, Rochester, NY

Explode Me was installed at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester NY in 2006, and was completed as part of an artist residency and teaching contract with the VSW.

The dimensions of the gallery space requires the viewer to cross the beam of the projection and cast their shadow into the video. In order to view the installation, you must be superimposing your own silhouette into the image and surround your own form with spectacular cartoon explosions. Periodically throughout the looping projection silhouettes of a “phantom” will cast shadows similar to your own and seem to cross through the room behind you. The result is a palpable sense of being in the presence of a “ghost”. Seeing the silhouette of another person casting a shadow in the projection, you might turn to look behind you – but there is no one there.

“Explode Me” was the third art piece in a series of work I had made to process the 9/11 event in New York. With this installation I invoke the phantasmic sense of absence. The feeling of having the shadows of the lost walking around you.