Description

Closer is a four-minute continuous take with a drone camera. The shot begins high in the sky looking down from a bird’s eye view at what appears to be a field or a painting or a tapestry. Holding this position for a few seconds, the camera then makes a steady, slow descent. As it comes closer to the ground, we realize someone (the artist) is lying on their back in a field. As the camera approaches, the sound of crickets can be heard. The drone continues its descent until within arms reach of the artist. She looks directly at the camera, sits up and taking deliberate action, she grabs the camera. The view swings from the artist to the sky ending the video.


Statement

Closer is a short meditation on the interplay between the body, the landscape, and the dynamics of surveillance. Beginning with a view of abstract colours, lines and texture of a cultivated field, flattened by the bird’s eye view perspective, it could almost be a painting or a weaving. As the camera slowly descends, it takes over a minute for viewers to realize that there is something in the centre of the frame that is not part of the landscape. At this point, our perception shifts from an overall view, to focus on wanting to discover what the form in the field could be. It is only when the camera has completed two thirds of its descent to the ground, that we can really make out the figure hidden in the foliage. For a moment we wonder if she has fallen. For the artist, being dwarfed in the landscape is a reminder that, “We are so small, we are nothing.”

For Karen, this final moment encapsulates the central tension of the work: the relationship between the observed and the observer. The drone, a symbol of impersonal surveillance, is rendered vulnerable by her act of seizing control. This action is both a declaration of agency and a subversion of the presumed power dynamics between the camera and its subject. The gentle yet decisive act of catching the drone reclaims autonomy, transforming surveillance into an intimate interaction. Closer is both a personal gesture and a universal statement, confronting the power dynamics embedded in the act of looking.

Don Goodes & Karen Trask, 2024



Exhibition History

Montréal Underground Film Festival
festival
May 17 – May 18, 2024
Groupe Intervention Vidéo (GIV), Montréal , Quebec, Canada
XXVI Rencontres Internationales Traverse
festival
March 15 – March 31, 2024
Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival
festival
October 16, 2023 – November 15, 2025
32e Vidéos de femmes dans le parc (VFP) – Groupe intervention vidéo (GIV)
screening
October 11 – October 11, 2023
Rome Women’s Film Festival
festival
2023
New York International Women Festival
festival
2023
superVISION
group
December 8 – December 18, 2022
Produit Rien, Montréal, Quebec, Canada
Description

superVISION is a duo exhibition by Paul Litherland and Karen Trask, comprised of video projections, sculpture and photography.

Paul’s video is composed of variously configured moving images of “scanned” landscapes, made by a drone fitted with a video camera. Inviting viewers to scan, to configure and to reconfigure the machinations of moving photographic images, the geometry of Paul’s video-composition not only underscores how the photographic steers vision – precisely “in its own image” – it also attests to the luminous world to which all cameras are exposed. This duplicity troubles the photographic and the visible itself.

Karen’s sculpture, photograph and video of a figure lying in a field attests to her body as a site of attachment to an elemental ground. Here slow motion and a photographic zoom speak less to the maneuvers of image making and more to a world dependence that cameras and all living things share. Here a wide shot, and we might say “overview”, gives way to the proximal and to the narrative of a lone body that is not only vulnerable but indebted to a fund it never oversees.

John Hunting, 2022

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superVISION est une exposition en duo de Paul Litherland et Karen Trask qui réunit des projections vidéo, des sculptures et des photographies.

La vidéo de Paul est composée d’images en mouvement de paysages qui ont été « scannés ». Ces images aux configurations variées ont été captées par un drone équipé d’une caméra vidéo. En invitant les spectateurs à scruter, à configurer puis reconfigurer à leur tour les machinations de ces images photographiques en mouvement, la géométrie qu’emprunte la composition vidéo de Paul souligne de quelle façon la photo oriente la vision – précisément “dans sa propre image” – en plus de témoigner du monde de lumière auquel toutes les caméras sont exposées. Cette duplicité a pour effet de brouiller les frontières entre le réel et l’image photographique.

La sculpture, la photographie et la vidéo d’une silhouette allongée dans un champ que présente Karen évoquent le corps de l’artiste perçu comme un site qui la relierait à un terroir primordial. Ici, le ralenti et le zoom photographique parlent moins des stratégies de fabrication de l’image que de notre dépendance à un monde que partagent les appareils photo avec tous les organismes vivants. Lâ, un plan large, que l’on pourrait qualifier de vue « amplifiée », fait place à à la proximité et au récit d’un corps solitaire qui est certes vulnérable, mais aussi redevable d’une abondance qu’il ne peut contrôler.

– John Hunting

Traduction : Francine Lalonde