The Third Space

Cecilia Dougherty
Friday, January 8th - Sunday, January 31st, 2010

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The Third Space is a video installation comprised of three pieces: The Third Space, Tetragrammaton, and Transfer. This project began two years ago when I started posting my photos online in order to keep an archive of what I look at and where I go on a daily basis. I hoped, with the online photographs, to be able to establish a different way to work in photography regarding notions of framing, location, subject, object, materiality and access, among other things. I was hoping my perception would change and that I would start re-thinking my relationship to space and places. I began to re-think the spaces themselves and the sense I have of my body in spaces. I began to videotape arbitrary places and was reminded one day of the 1973 video by Frank Gillette called Tetragrammaton. The title refers to an archaic Hebrew word that is formed by the four letters י ה ו ה (YHWH), representing the name of the god, a name that cannot be spoken aloud, and a word that only a few people from each generation are taught to pronounce. Frank Gillette’s video is about the sea, the sky, the beach and the passing of time. I decided then that my project was changing and went to the beach to shoot my response to Gillette. The idea of the quotidian did not vanish but it did become significant and renewed.

These videos are low budget and low-tech, representing a relationship to movement and space that is based on portability, presence, and immediacy. Transfer and The Third Space were shot using a consumer-grade digital still camera, and Tetragrammaton was shot with a cell phone.

THE VIDEOS

The Third Space (2009, 27:05)
Supertasking (2009, 30:00)
Tetragrammaton (2009, 23:00)