The distance
– 2016
Monochannel 16:9. Videoprojection. 12 min 28 sec.
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This work is a visual essay on the power of the gaze in its most literal sense. A slow succession of extreme close-ups on the eyes of the leaders of the world is shown in a markedly horizontal layout.
The transitions between characters, and the narrow framing over their eyes, challenge the identification of their public images, while isolating their powerful gazes, and producing strange hybridizations of their features, close to cyclopean deformities.
The eyes are popularly regarded as the windows of the soul; they are the perceptive organs per excellence, since they help us to create a primary picture of the world. The distance of the beholder from the object of their gaze is a scale that measures our relational character, our social interests and empathy. However, in this video, the empty gazes of the characters, isolated in close-up shots, generate a tableau of loneliness.
—
This work is a visual essay on the power of the gaze in its most literal sense. A slow succession of extreme close-ups on the eyes of the leaders of the world is shown in a markedly horizontal layout.
The transitions between characters, and the narrow framing over their eyes, challenge the identification of their public images, while isolating their powerful gazes, and producing strange hybridizations of their features, close to cyclopean deformities.
The eyes are popularly regarded as the windows of the soul; they are the perceptive organs per excellence, since they help us to create a primary picture of the world. The distance of the beholder from the object of their gaze is a scale that measures our relational character, our social interests and empathy. However, in this video, the empty gazes of the characters, isolated in close-up shots, generate a tableau of loneliness.