| Project Statement: Binocular Project is a ongoing collaboration with Soyeon Jung. It is a roving, site-specific work that responds to the physical, aesthetic, historical, and cultural conditions of the locations to which it belongs. Buffalo's Central Terminal was the initial site for the project, which interrogates both the physical and psychological location of Terminal building itself. The Terminal is imagined as a transitory site, both in its original function and in respect to its flagging viability and gradual absence from the public consciousness. As physical distance is a key factor in defining the identity of the Terminal, the installation surveys the surrounding landscape and community from which the Terminal has been severed.
An oversized, stereo viewing device, similar in appearance to an elongated pair of binoculars, transmits photographic and moving images to the viewer as they engage with the piece. The iconography of the binoculars alludes to alternate forms of intense observation - surveillance, voyeurism, spectatorship – which conjure a desire to bring one into contact with the subject of the gaze.
While ostensibly viewing the landscape surrounding the Terminal, the viewing device houses, in one side, a video loop and, in the other, a series of still photographs. The imagery orchestrates an imaginative, indefinite timeline that chronicles both the physical changes in the Terminal and the historical events that provoked its decline.
Considering the form of the stereoscope, the right and left channels address the duality of the Terminal. One channel is composed of video (movement, transport, vitality) while the other is photo-based (immobile, lacking momentum). The simultainety of the viewer's engagement forges a concise meditation on the historical and contemporary identity of this archiectural landmark. |
