Cluster Praxis

Video-projection installation. Dimensions variable. Video 8’40”, colour, stereo sound. Suspension rods, aluminum track system, commando cloth, DVD player, video projector and stereo audio system. 2000
Externally, the room hangs like a large object hung from the ceiling. It is made from black sound dampening curtains hung from a heavy duty track system. Inside the “curtain space” the floor is carpeted in dark gray, creating a warm sense of enclosure. The video, Cluster Praxis is structured by the sound —a narrative mix of voice and ambient soundscapes— dominated by a 5 minute long poetic monologue, which deals with assimilation and desire dissipating into the city.

“Moving quickly from an excavation site through selected Psychasthenia facades to a [….] dance party, Cluster Praxis traces an ever-deepening subjectivity. The “objective” camera angle of the exterior shots gives way to the “subjective” first-person vantage, as the camera melts inconspicuously into a sea of undulating dancers.”* Cluster Praxis deals with dancing as a form of social practice, and with the desire for collectivity and bodily social liberation. The assimilatory aspect of dancing in a club or party makes the dancer part of the baroque mass erotification of social space.

Review by Jordan Kantor in Artforum Jan, 2002