MAN AND LANDSCAPE

Video installation, 2019 
Rock rug: 150 x 100 cm Man: 150 x 150 cm
Videography — Nelly Kate Anderson
Video Editing — Hilla Shapira + Nelly Kate Anderson
Performer - Declan Knight
Photography - Rob Crossno

Man And Landscape is a 2-channel video installation which focuses on the relationship  between white men, land, and domestic space. I collected stones and placed them onto a surface for screening an image of a Persian-style rug available for purchase on Home Depot’s website. The audience is invited to sit and watch a naked man (flirting with the viewer) next to the glowing rug of rock. I created a space of fluid power dynamics between the viewer, the man, and the rug, as a place of vulnerability and discomfort. 

Man and Landscape was made as a comment on domestic objects in a digital world. Rugs and textiles sold in corporations are made by digital files. The domestic space is full of representational objects, digital versions of the things that unite to create a global culture. I am interested in the digital symbol of the Persian rug versus the craft, culture and its place of origin. What is the meaning of having it in different physical spaces as a digital file? Who owns symbols, objects, and space?

Displacement of physical stones from exterior to interior. Displacement of symbols from the Middle East to a Home Depot store in Michigan. Are parallel virtual spaces preserving or erasing cultures? Who owns symbols and who benefits from them?

What are the possibilities of living in a digital space? Living in a world with an environmental crisis makes me think about digital material as an option; as in, living with the objects we love via digital representations. What would that space look like? How can we use the technology without appropriating cultures? I think about future digital textiles in critical aspects because I understand their complexity and their potential. This project aims to raise awareness and question the future.