Give me Your Light
A generative video-installation.
Video-Music-Words-Code: Jhave. 2011.Commissioned for the 2011 Biennal de Montréal
by Paule Mackrous, Curator and Editor-in-Chief of CIAC
REVIEWS
"Nothing really happens, except that it creates - at least in me - an endless and unbearable feeling of hopelessness in the face of human stupidity and helplessness in regards to fate's cruel path."Isa Tousignant in Akimbo 05/17/11.
"...in what is bound to be the most talked-about work in the biennale, Give Me Your Light, Jhave employs a random algorithm to construct a trenchant portrait of suffering in images of a chained monkey and dying kitten that the artist came across by chance and then filmed. It's a sequence that borders on emotional exploitation, but is nonetheless unforgettable."
Bryne McLaughlin in Canadian Art. Spring 2011.
ARTIST STATEMENT
One day in 2008 in Malaysia, by chance, I videotaped two starkly ordinary events: a dying kitten and a chained monkey. Give me Your Light explores the archetypal capacity of these creatures. The archetypes are death and enslavement.The dying abandoned kitten in a parking lot stands-in for the fatally ill, homeless runaways and abandoned children. The chained monkey suggests slaves, prisoners, abductees, captives, convicts, detainees and internees.
Give me Your Light is about the limits of empathy and ubiquitous complicity.
TECHNE
The display of Give me Your Light is not a linear video, it is a set of video-clips, sounds, music and words reassembled every two minutes into a new sequence by an algorithm.Events repeat but never in the same order. Clips appear in both monochrome and colour, with music and without, with sound and silent. Contextual structure and affective content collide.
INTERACTIVITY
None.DÉMARCHE ARTISTIQUE
Un jour en Malaisie, en 2008, le hasard m'amène à filmer deux événements singulièrement communs : un chaton mourant et un singe enchaîné. Give me Your Light explore l'archétype potentiel de ces créatures, soit la mort et l'esclavage.Le chaton abandonné et moribond dans un parc de stationnement représente les mourants, les sans-abris et les enfants laissés-pour-compte. Le singe enchaîné représente esclaves, prisonniers, personnes enlevées, captifs, les condamnés, les détenus et les internés.
Give me Your Light explore les limites de l'empathie et d'une complicité omniprésente.