About

Denis Diderot said that a good piece of theater functions like a painting and a good painting must also have elements of a plot. The art of these works in video is located between the twin poles of animation and immobility, movement and stasis, action and image. As such, they borrow from and allude to the tradition of tableau vivants, or "living pictures" (while trying at the same time to advance it as well). The term has historically describes a group of suitably costumed actors or artist's models, carefully posed and often theatrically lit. Throughout the duration of the display, the people shown remain as still as possible. The approach thus marries the art forms of the stage with those of painting and photography. The development of the tableaux vivants form to the point of difference, is the infusion of time; the elaboration of a distinctive vocabulary of actions, poses and, a certain style of performance; alongside a merging of the spontaneity and looseness of the 'snapshot,' or the 'accidental' image – so characteristic of photography — with the hyper-theatrical and the static qualities of the traditional form. What results is a scene that combines the static compositional aspects of the 'Western Picture' with an infusion of the unpredictability that an image replayed in extreme slow motion uniquely affords. The strange and unanticipated moments that rise to the surface from the depths of these nearly still images, slowly or suddenly, awaken stories within stories.