​The Eagle Document – Installation 2008

​Five channel video projection installation
Duration sequence: 23”
HD, colour mono

The Eagle Document was an ongoing research project now consisting of various manifestations. Stage one The Eagle Document – Performance, took place at the James Hockey and Foyer Galleries on September 14th 2007. Combining modern dance, performance art and falconry display, the live performance was choreographed to sound tracks by the experimental band Bender. Stage two The Eagle Document – Installation culminated in a multi-screen projection installation for a solo exhibition at the James Hockey and Foyer Galleries in 2008.
 
The work is inspired by Marcel Broodthaers’ Musée d’Art Moderne, a critical commentary on art objects and the museum at the end of the modernist period. The Eagle Document - Installation borrows Broodthaers’ methodological trope ‘the object as method of display’ and investigates the ‘object’ within expanded art concepts. The body of work originated with the live event which examined notions of liveness, performativity and the document in the diagrammatic space of the gallery. Far from signifying symbolically, the work utilises the eagle as object/prop and performative method. ​

The Installation is the culmination of the filmed performance rehearsals presented on five screens. The multiple views from different camera positions and the multiple timelines create overlaps and repeats thus reconfiguring time as simultaneous duration. The immersive screen configuration echoes the mechanism of production, rhythmic duration and interruption are experienced by the viewer as spatial and auditory phenomena. Both choreography and action are reminiscent of the early video performances for example, Marina Abramovic and Rebecca Horn. However the multi-screen installation configures ‘body and space’, a familiar theme in performance art, not from the point of the performer, but extends the notion of performativity to the spatial experience of the viewer. The installation contrasts the diagrammatically closed space of performance with the open space of the installation. Thus viewing and experiencing the work involves the physical navigation of the space by the viewer in order to assemble both images and sounds.