ATTACK is a two-channel video installation made for the Biennale Adriatica di Arti Nuove in San Benedetto del Tronto, Italy that took place in August 2006. ATTACK is a bi-dimensional work, a visual one between two diverse and opposed subjects and a web-based one by means of a regularly updated blog. Attack inspiration originates from the idea of Raid, an incursion, a violent encounter between contrasting realities. While the spectator is placed in-between a virtual crossfire, a digital clock counts the amount of immigrant deaths in the US-Mexican border in the last five years.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
A projection of a contemporary image on a wall: a street child sniffing glue, while casting a quick glance, a corrosive and subliminal call. On the opposite wall: a cowboy of the past century (taken from the film The Great Train Robbery by Edwin S.Porter, dating 1903) shooting with a revolver at the opposite screen. The watcher is in-between these two video-projections, as if he/she is put in between 100 years of history, or 5000 years of human conflicts.
A recurrent dull sound can be heard in the black space. Loop sequencing, slowed to the extreme, symbolize the wish to participate in the encounter-clash between two stereotypes of power, but also the attack-defense of the two opponents in a raid.
CURATOR’S STATEMENT
In Maria Rosa Jijon and Cesar Meneghetti’s the public is fully involved in the action developed by the characters represented in the video installation. The visitor finds him/ herself in between a child sniffing glue and an old cowboy shooting at him. The latter image has been reclaimed from the history of cinema and projected against an image of contemporary reality. By doing so, the two artists propose a participatory process within a dialectic action in time and space.
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