The original material was made for a project presented in the entrance hall of the World Bank in Washington DC. It was a reference to the United Nations' fourth International Women's Conference in Beijing. In this first version five monitors in loops showed the eyes of the ninety women of varying ages, skin colours and social-cultural backgrounds who were working as secretaries at the World Bank. Their gaze took on many expressions, now dreamy, now startled, now thinking of a lover as they uttered the sentence "I cannot take my eyes off you". With the Greek myth of Medusa in mind, who turned everyone who looked at her to stone, the women gaze directly at the viewer and woman's the right to stare gave rise to a voyeuristic image of looking and being looked at. The material from this installation is now reutilized but in a very different context. It forms the basis of a DJ/VJ presentation in the concert room of the Melkweg. On this occasion Jenny Marketou will be working in collaboration with deejays. The image has been partly converted into two loops and a third image source consists of a live mixture of stored images with images taken at this moment. These three image streams are seen simultaneously on the numerous screens occupying the performance space. The first loop is based on the aesthetic transition from one eye to the other. The second shows the eyes after their treatment with a number of special effects which change their look : the staring has been mollified into something fluid, poetic and seductive, supported by a rapid beat. The third group of images is taken partly on the spot and combined with two other sources. The DJ on the sound track reacts to the images and Marketou herself who will appear as VJ responds to the sound. Together the DJ and VJ instigate a dialogue between sound and image. In this night-club ambience the original images acquire a completely different context: eyes are no longer bound to bodies and it is even unclear whether the eyes are male or female. They have been changed and manipulated by special effects and image mixing and detached from their owners they take on an impersonal, vagrant look. What we now see are non-linear textures and forms which have a hypnotic effect and support not just one but many interpretations and meanings. For the viewer the images offer the possibility of escape, temptation, reflection, or just the pleasure of looking, interpreting and trying once more to find a meaning. The whole forms the audio-visual wallpaper of a night-club where all those present are passers-by and at the same time participants in a collective experience. This real-time eye/body/ image/sound-scape is experienced by those present in this time and space. They are themselves a part of a collective experience that is simultaneously made and consumed. For those present it is a momentary form of unity without becoming whole. In this environment the relations between body, time, space and visual information are fluid and metamorphic, unfocused on who, what, where or when, and without a centre of experience. The emphasis is then in fact the experience and sound and image combine to displace static, physical space into hybrid experiences without clearly marked boundaries: what is cause and what effect; what comes from the sound and what from the image – the whole issue of origin is subordinated to the momentaneity of the experience.
– Carla Hoekendijk
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Special effects: Jackie and Mao/FunkTAXI
Jenny Marketou ° 1961, Athens (Greece)
Lives and works in New York (USA)
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