NOTHING FURTHER HAPPENS
Nothing Further Happens, 2011; 16mm film, screened as single-channel video projected at architectural scale, color, sound by Ben Frost; continuous loop, 9:38 minutes.
Captured in 16mm film throughout Iceland, Svalbard Archipelago, Atacama Desert in Chile, and in White Sands, United States.
David Bard-Schwarz in his book Strangest Thing: An Introduction to Electronic Art through the Teaching of Jacques Lacan. London: Routledge. 2014, explores the links between works of new media and psychoanalysis (how we process what we see, hear, touch, imagine, and remember).
About Nothing Further Happens, Bard-Schwarz writes: “Throughout, the picture plane is divided approximately in half; the shots are of natural subject matter, but, for me, the effect is anything but a representation of nature, as if through a transparent, or neutral lens. The 16 mm film has a thick, material presence, and there are many moments of glitch. For example, there are several frames of glitch of which the left-hand side of the image above is an example (in the original, the sky is a bright violet and the ocean is bright yellow and red); then the technology settles in, snapping into place, as on the right...The bare shots evoke looking at looking, not as in frame narrative in which each frame shifts what came before or after (as in a traditional unreliable narrator in fiction). Rather, the materiality of the specular signifier is laid bare, and this particularly in the untouched moments of glitch. ...The slowing moving images of Méndez’s work are heightened as signifiers through glitch–signifiers that fire back at their source...The music by Ben Frost parallels in sound Méndez’s visuals …These over- and underwhelmed pitches of an F Minor triad that parallel the visual glitch that stares at bare landscapes are signifiers that point to themselves.”
Exhibition History:
Metanatural Landscapes: Berlin-Los Angeles Connect
Panke Gallery, Berlin, Germany
June 7–22, 2019. Curated by Ichiro Irie and Sakrowski (group)
Berlin-Atonal Music and Video Festival, 2017, Berlin-Mitte, Germany (group)
55th Venice Biennale, Maldives Pavilion, Pirate Cinema. May 29 – June 09, 2013. Venice, Italy. Curated by Ehsan Fardjadniya and Miriam de Rosa (group).
Each Day at Noon: Rebeca Méndez April 2 – 30, 2012. Hammer Museum, Café Hammer, Los Angeles, California. Curated by Elizabeth Cline (solo).
So Close and Yet So Far February 7 – March 19, 2012. José Druidas Baida Gallery, Mount Saint Mary’s College, Los Angeles. Curated by Irina Costache (group).
Rebeca Méndez, Museum of Contemporary Art, Oaxaca, Mexico, July 15–October 03, 2011, curated by Jorge Contreras, director of MACO (solo).
Captured in 16mm film throughout Iceland, Svalbard Archipelago, Atacama Desert in Chile, and in White Sands, United States.
David Bard-Schwarz in his book Strangest Thing: An Introduction to Electronic Art through the Teaching of Jacques Lacan. London: Routledge. 2014, explores the links between works of new media and psychoanalysis (how we process what we see, hear, touch, imagine, and remember).
About Nothing Further Happens, Bard-Schwarz writes: “Throughout, the picture plane is divided approximately in half; the shots are of natural subject matter, but, for me, the effect is anything but a representation of nature, as if through a transparent, or neutral lens. The 16 mm film has a thick, material presence, and there are many moments of glitch. For example, there are several frames of glitch of which the left-hand side of the image above is an example (in the original, the sky is a bright violet and the ocean is bright yellow and red); then the technology settles in, snapping into place, as on the right...The bare shots evoke looking at looking, not as in frame narrative in which each frame shifts what came before or after (as in a traditional unreliable narrator in fiction). Rather, the materiality of the specular signifier is laid bare, and this particularly in the untouched moments of glitch. ...The slowing moving images of Méndez’s work are heightened as signifiers through glitch–signifiers that fire back at their source...The music by Ben Frost parallels in sound Méndez’s visuals …These over- and underwhelmed pitches of an F Minor triad that parallel the visual glitch that stares at bare landscapes are signifiers that point to themselves.”
Exhibition History:
Metanatural Landscapes: Berlin-Los Angeles Connect
Panke Gallery, Berlin, Germany
June 7–22, 2019. Curated by Ichiro Irie and Sakrowski (group)
Berlin-Atonal Music and Video Festival, 2017, Berlin-Mitte, Germany (group)
55th Venice Biennale, Maldives Pavilion, Pirate Cinema. May 29 – June 09, 2013. Venice, Italy. Curated by Ehsan Fardjadniya and Miriam de Rosa (group).
Each Day at Noon: Rebeca Méndez April 2 – 30, 2012. Hammer Museum, Café Hammer, Los Angeles, California. Curated by Elizabeth Cline (solo).
So Close and Yet So Far February 7 – March 19, 2012. José Druidas Baida Gallery, Mount Saint Mary’s College, Los Angeles. Curated by Irina Costache (group).
Rebeca Méndez, Museum of Contemporary Art, Oaxaca, Mexico, July 15–October 03, 2011, curated by Jorge Contreras, director of MACO (solo).
