Ligorano/Reese: In Memory or Truth
Artist(s):
Title:
- In Memory or Truth
Exhibition:
Creation Year:
- 2005
Medium:
- Micro-video projection system, digital print, DVD video
Size:
- Table top, with 8 feet x 8 feet wall piece
Category:
Artist Statement:
We live in a world where the highest function of the sign is to make reality disappear and, at the same time, to mask that disappearance. Jean Baudriallard, The Perfect Crime (1996) In Memory of Truth takes off from the debate attributed to the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas regarding the passage of angels. Over time, the philosopher’s original proposition has been rephrased to be about angels dancing on a pin. Ligorano/Reese reinterpret this theory with this installation. Like many of the artists’ other pieces, In Memory of Truth combines media and manipulates imagery from print, film, and internet sources to reveal latent political meanings and messages. Using a custom-designed optical system incorporating a micro-LCD display and primary lens, the artists have devised a way to project moving video images on the head of a pin. The viewer sees a montage of Hollywood films with the aid of a magnifying glass. Warsaw, Beirut, Belfast … the streets themselves have now become a permanent film-set … The West … now plunged into the transpolitcal pan-cinema of the nuclear age, into an entirely cinematic vision of the world … Those American TV channels which broadcast news footage around the clock … have understood this point very well. Because in fact this isn’t really news footage any longer, but the raw material of vision … Paul Virilio, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception (1984)
