BRUCE CHARLESWORTH
AIRLOCK
INSTALLATIONS

Installation detail from Airlock (waiting room), 2004
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AIRLOCK is a multimedia narrative environment about anticipation and the passage of time. The viewer is lured through spaces and events linked by proximity and video. The three videos in Airlock are seamlessly looped and synchronized with each other. The first video is seen on a monitor in a short hallway approach to the rest of the installation. In this video, a worker (Charlesworth) dressed as a sort of aviator/fly fisherman, comes and goes from a sparsely furnished office.
The viewer enters a second space, the room just seen on video. Another video, projected on an upper wall of the second room, reveals scenes in a third room. The viewer passes through a triangular airlock bathed in blue light. The dark final room contains an inflated pool. Additional scenes taking place in the waiting room are projected in this space. Each room has its own audio ambience and harmonic.
Because the viewer enters and exits at will, there is no beginning or end to the narrative. He or she may hesitate to proceed or return through the environment, even with the knowledge that the space is safe and the video is prerecorded. Viewers are meant to discover their own willingness to accept a fiction.There are visual allusions to scenes in the video, but the installation itself takes the form of an exaggerated archive of visual references.
See the related video work
Copyright © Bruce Charlesworth




