POTLACH 2006
Moveable FeastI have no idea what the Mields household regime is like but the video installation by Anna Katharina Mields “ Picnic” ( MFA Interim show GSA) leaves me wondering if the family home ever resounded with the phrase: “Don’t play with your food!”
Playful , but with an undeniable undertow of malice, Mields choreographs an array of picnic items, using digital video to animate grapes, bananas, gingerbread men and creating the infamous ‘dance of the frankfurter sausage’. She builds up the action slowly, constantly pulling the viewer back to the piece just at the point where attention is wavering. Although it is on a loop, the projection has a long interval of visual inactivity. “Potlach” lurks on the floor; on oblong of blank projection highlights a rough polystyrene sheet half draped with a white cloth. On a slight tilt, the polystyrene sports a variety of objects, some organic and some inorganic and some strangely in-between. The odd twitter of birdsong hints of a world beyond the darkened tomb of the gallery space, but apart from that one is left with the uncomfortable feeling that someone forgot to press play.
In this period of awkward silence, one is able to scrutinise the afore mentioned collection of objects. The grapes are shrivelled, the cake has seen better days, someone’s taken a bite out of the gingerbread man an the frankfurter sausage is glistening in a decidedly unpleasant manner. The hybrid objects are casts or fruit, anaemic but strangely plump looking alongside their wizened organic cousins.
The action begins; a projected tablecloth is thrown over the sparsely set area. Slowly items appear, sometimes a projected replica of one of the real objects, sometimes a new different item. Some just appear and some are thrown or rolled into place, sounds of a distinctly electronic nature, similar to the sound a digital camera makes when a shot is snapped, herald their arrival. The projected ginger man faces up to his real semi – masticated counterpart, before lying over him; providing a virtual prosthetic limb. Plump fresh projected grapes swell over the shrivelled remains of the real bunch illustrating the ravages of time. One can’t help but recall the piece by Sam Taylor wood; “ Still Life” (2001) in which the words ‘ Momento Mori” ring in your ears loud and clear.
‘Potlach” might be nodding to this reference, but the interest seems to lie more in the process of making the statement and acknowledgement of the technical process, rather than a slick illustration. In an era when photographic documentation is so intertwined with daily life, where amateur photographers snap anything and everything on mobile phone cameras and mini DV’s, one is left with the question: is it the real objects that make the video projection that authenticates the real objects for us?
Bridget Kennedy June 2006