Isabel Reichert and Heike Liss
Stills from "Woman on a Swing" by Isabel Reichert and Heike Liss
In the video installation Woman on a Swing, Reichert and Liss explore the relationship between movement, sensation, and subject in cinematography. The video depicts a young woman on a swing; a classic motif suggesting light-hearted and carefree youth, ephemerality, desire, buoyancy. The subject is seen from behind in an intentionally indeterminate setting, which allows/enables the viewer to project and/or identify.
Although she swings back and forth, however, she always remains in the same location within the frame, and the same distance away from the viewer. The movement and scale of the surrounding frame changes as if the movement is transposed from the subject to the camera frame. This optokinetic stimulation induces a physiological phenomena known as vection, the illusion of self-motion.
Dear Isabel and Heike,
Thank you for posting. What lyric work!
Might you write about how Woman on a Swing relates to the conceptual premise of Losing Yourself?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Cathy
Dear Cathy,
Thanks for your comment.
To answer your question, we took the idea of loosing yourself in the 21st century and broke into to components. There is the motion of the woman on the swing, which has a “lost in the moment” quality. For us, it also symbolizes a point between childhood and adulthood.
The second component is the 21st century notion of “contemporary”, conveyed through the special effects used to manipulate the frame. In a way, the subject is not moving at all, it is the apparatus that is moving . It is technology that puts the work in a contemporary context, timestamps it if you will, and a allows for a transformation that takes the movement out of the act of swinging.
Hope that helps.
Isabel
“Woman on a Swing” has a very mesmerizing effect. I almost got hypnotized watching the video…