Rob Carter
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Stone on Stone |
Tell me something about you and artistic background.
I am visual artist who creates re-constructed imagery of architecture and landscape, using photography, time-lapse and video animation. I received my BFA from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (Oxford, 1998). In August 2000 I relocated to New York to attend Hunter College, receiving my MFA in 2003. Since then I have exhibited work in numerous locations in Europe and North America. In May 2008 I opened a solo exhibition of video and photography in Madrid at Galería Fruela and a second in October at the Pastificio Cerere, Rome. In the same year I attended the Art Omi Residency, became a West Prize finalist, and was awarded a Marie Walsh Sharpe studio space. The following year I premiered this new video at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and mounted my first US based solo show in Chicago at Ebersmoore gallery. This year I am working on an Art In General New Commission (opening in spring 2011 in NYC), will exhibit my video work at the ICA in Philadelphia, and my photography in the ‘Bruce Silverstein Annual’, plus take part in residencies in Krems, Austria, and at the Alquería de los Artistas, near Valencia, Spain.
Tell me about this film, initial idea and work process.
This stop-motion video animation uses the architectural language of High Gothic and Modernism to invent a contradictory history of their evolvement. The theme starts and finishes with the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, located on the upper west side of Manhattan. This vast anachronistic building lies unfinished and partially ruined after over a century of intermittent construction and restoration, and its re-created 13th century medieval architecture unintentionally symbolizes those eventful years of indecision, tragedy and changes in the meaning and purpose of the city’s architecture and landscape, especially religious buildings. It is contrasted with Le Corbusier’s La Tourette monastery in France, competed in 1960. The video uses this anomalous but single-minded architectural vision, as the foundation for a new emergence of Gothic religious expression, resulting in a complete and unified fantasy cathedral – akin to the building that the Church of Saint John the Divine might have aspired to be.
Process: The video was made by digitally manipulating existing photographs – adding or removing items to create a composite. The perspective is then altered (stretched) and the image reprinted. Frame by frame the imagery is then cutout or twisted out of position in three dimensions and photographed from an angle that corrects the perspective alteration. Each still is shot with a digital SLR and then made into an image sequence in the editing process. In much of the video the process is shown in reverse, but essentially this is traditional stop-motion animation.
Are you working on new projects at the moment?
I am currently editing a two channel video piece which is an HD time-lapse video of plants growing around a photo-collaged model of a stadium. The outside of the stadium is all Gothic architecture from cathedrals all over Europe. In actual fact the video will be in reverse - starting with a pile of dead plants, then revealing vegetables 'un-growing' themselves and eventually the plants going back into the soil, revealing the stadium building isolated in a soil field, then a giant car park. The soundtrack will combine religious and sporting singing, and chanting.
Do you have specific influences in your film/video making?
The people who inspire me change quite regularly depending on what I'm working on, but right now these people spring to mind: Adam Curtis, Steve McQueen (the artist), Monty Python, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Charles Darwin, Neil Hannon, Michael Pollan, M.R. James.
Why is it important for you to show your film/video in a festival?
What role do you think Oslo Screen Festival should have to promote your work?
Generally I do not show my videos in festivals (usually galleries and museums), but this one has a different approach to most of them, and will provide a great opportunity to show my work to a wider audience outside the USA. I hope that this might create other opportunities to show my work in Norway.
