Nelly-Ève Rajotte
Claustrophobia of Open Spaces
CIRCAÂ art actuel
March 12, 2016 – April 23, 2016
www.circa-art.com
As the camera pans over rows of airplanes, zooming in and out on nondescript white wing after white wing, over dusty patches of grass and empty patches of sky, the monotonous quickly shifts to unsettling. That is exactly how Nelly-Ève Rajotte curated her video installation, Claustrophobia of Open Spaces, to be.
“Otherwise peaceful places are seen as becoming somehow twisted, with anxious minds interpreting them as being surprisingly hostile,†reads the CIRCA exhibition’s accompanying text. A low-frequency buzz permeates the gallery. It appears to be part of the first video, connoting the wind tunnel in the small space between the jet bridge and the airplane, or the invisible roar that emanates as the plane ascends. Walking into the next room is troubling because the sound remains, while the image is replaced by scenes of sublime nature.
Water hits the rocks in slow motion and waterfall footage is played in rewind. Rajotte plays with nature enough so that it is recognizable but not enough to still make sense. The crashing water is sloth-like and powerless, and the waterfall is now receding into itself.
Unease and anxiety is heightened by investigation of the gallery space itself. The meta element is an effort to force out a consciousness in the viewer of the distance between themselves and the subject, and the distance between what is represented and how this representation is sought. Here in the Belgo Building, we are far from the scenes on the screen; an edited video of nature is far from nature.
The ambiguity of the sound and image centralize individual reaction and experience, and the space becomes a fluid sculpture that sees a range of reactions, a diversity perhaps not always produced by the traditional still image.
