Discards in a digital age

 

Click here to view an audio slideshow of artist Lynn Cazabon discussing her work.

In its first production of the semester, The Art Gallery is presenting a double exhibition exploring the concept of time through digital media. Running through Oct. 17, The Archive's Shadow and To Remain feature uniquely different mediums that juxtapose the idea of tradition and modernity through the eyes of its respective artists.

 

 

"I had been thinking about … artists marking time or thinking about time in their work and thinking about it in the large scene of how we are, as a culture, very aware of time," said Jennie Fleming, assistant director of The Art Gallery and curator for the show.

 

 

Both exhibitions use the concept of traditional materials - like analog tape, film stock and traditional photography - combined with the contemporary medium of digital art.

 

 

This juxtaposition of old and new, Fleming said, provides an interesting contrast and an appreciation of what tradition can still provide to art.

 

 

"For someone to initially record and put together the work digitally, but then for the final presentation to be in an analog form … was an interesting tension," Fleming added. "Between where we are right now and giving up film, giving up and moving on to other forms, but yet this interest in the analog qualities of media is not going away."

 

 

The Archive's Shadow features images from Discard, Baltimore-based artist Lynn Cazabon's ongoing project. Beginning in 2001, Cazabon began collecting unwanted movie film stock from nearby public institutions. The film stocks used are from the National Archives located in College Park, the Pratt Library in Baltimore and the University of New Hampshire libraries.

 

 

"The media of film has sort of fallen by the wayside, and they're being used less and less," said Cazabon, who is also an art professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "It has to do with the viability of the medium and also the public's use of them … [Discard] is more like a record of their disappearance from our culture."

 

 

Using the film stock, its canisters and its labels as sources of inspiration, Cazabon's documentation of film serves not only as a snapshot of a moment in time, but also as a nod to a traditional medium that is gradually becoming obsolete yet still remains in our culture.

 

 

During a tour of The Archive's Shadow, Cazabon walked The Diamondback through her work while providing her own personal insight.

 

 

"DISCARDS 3 (THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES, COLLEGE PARK, MD)"

 

 

Cazabon: "I got the idea that I wanted to, I guess, give a physical presence to the film, so I create a shadow for them and an environment for them to kind of live. I wanted them to seem like they were floating in a limbo. … I see this [one] as one big space, and we're just seeing kind of three windows into it, as if a kind of landscape keeps going. There's all these films floating around, like they have a life after their burial, after they've been removed from culture. They have to go somewhere."

 

 

"DISCARDS 2 (THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES, COLLEGE PARK, MD)"

 

 

Cazabon: "I imagined a lot of different ways before I arrived at this solution. One time, I was thinking I was gonna have just one big long line around the gallery, but it'd go on really long. So I settled on this three-panel presentation where it's kind of like dancing and more like a drawing. I actually continued this frame … so they actually sequentially continue across the panels. I was trying to make them all connect narratively in a sense, as well as visually. … Formally, I like the actual interruption that you would kind of see the film and then you'd be interrupted and then the viewer actually has to fill in the gap."

 

 

"DISCARD (UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, DURHAM, N.H.)"

 

 

Cazabon: "[When a] homeless person dies, they have to be put somewhere, and a lot of times if the police can't find their family or any information about them … their ashes are cremated and they're put in a metal box and they're buried. I thought about these cans like those kind of boxes, and they have the remains of these films, and they're kind of suspended in time and space, but then also there's a little bit of identity because you do have the handwritten label. That gives you the title, but then also the title invites speculation on the content. … There's also a kind of poetry that happens, I think. … You start reading the titles across the panels and it almost becomes a kind of found poem."

 

 

dnahn@umd.edu