2018, 00:02:58, Single-channel video and sound

Rise

As an artist, I've held a long-standing interest in visually exploring civil unrest and its representation in the media. This exploration has, for the most part, taken the form of static-motionless works on paper. The video piece RISE is a form of activating my work by bringing it into the realm of movement and animation.

This video takes direct inspiration from shadow puppetry and implements an overt handmade, child-like aesthetic as an approach to the moving image. The characters in RISE move as if on-strings, executing fundamental and repetitive articulated movements. They are gliding through streetscapes with no apparent motive. In contrast with the concrete and referential nature of the audio, in which crowds, riot field-recordings, sirens and helicopters are worked into a narrative.

Furthermore, I'm exploring the dichotomous moments and different phases a crowd goes through. Particularly the tension that is felt right before a riot. That very moment in which both possibilities of collective behaviour coexist, upheaval or the situation stays, flows and ends as it is. In the particular case of RISE the situation has tipped towards disruption.