Hellen Sky, John McCormick, Garth Paine: Escape Velocity

Artist(s):

• Hellen Sky
• John McCormick
• Garth Paine

Title:

Escape Velocity

Exhibition:

• SIGGRAPH 1998: Touchware

Medium:

Teleperformance

Category:

• Performance

Keywords:

• teleperformance
• movement

Artist Statement:

As technology revolutionises our public, private and interstitial spaces, shrinking the globe, compressing time and expanding horizons, the reach of an arm, the length of a stride is distorted and confused. Where do flesh, fragile bone, senses and perceptions fit into the new geographies of the late 20th century?

The contemporary desire to escape the physical through technology is a version of the ancient quest to evade the body’s mortality and access “other” existences in spiritual or metaphysical realms. The complex ethical and artistic implications which this contemporary quest embodies are enmeshed in the multiple perspectives on the body incorporated in the work.

Escape Velocity raises questions, without answers, presenting a range of perspectives upon the nakedly physical real body, the technologically mediated body, the absent body, and the disembodied emanations of the mind.

Escape Velocity is movement driven mirroring the complex nature of the body’s relationship to space, time and place at a moment in history when these parameters are starting to shift under our feet.