Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Smoke and Mirrors / Ran Slavin / Video and sound / Length: 3:54 minutes/ Loop / Media: 1 or 3 channel HD video file screening. Exterior, south Tel Aviv, night, a gas station`s spot lights suddenly burst with steam, a nearby car suddenly sets on fire. Mirrored smoke patters appear to hover under a bridge and to burst in old dusty luck machines in a beat pinball game arcade. A silhouette of a mysteriously still man blinks on and off nervously. Smoke and Mirrors. from Wikipedia: Smoke and mirrors is a metaphor for a fraudulent, deceptive or insubstantial explanation or description. The source of the name is based on magician`s illusions, where magicians make objects appear or disappear by extending or retracting mirrors amid a confusing burst of smoke and also a slang for magic acts and `freak show` displays that depend on`trompe l`oeil` effects. More generally, "smoke and mirrors" may refer to any sort of presentation by which the audience is intended to be deceived. The term is derived from the dubious vaudeville ( vaudeville etymology: voix de ville, or "voice of the city") techniques traditionally used by stage magicians.

Ran Slavin is a video and digital media artist. After graduating from the Art Academy in Jerusalem in 1990, continuously treading both visual and sound paths. Today Ran works with video installation, cinema, experimental film and live-video-sound performance. Attracted to the uncanny, a world of wonder and a universe of unresolved mysteries, some of the narratives and visual vocabulary in his work feature images of an abandoned gas station bursting in steam and a car on fire (Smoke and Mirrors), a sunken man underwater with a gun, a tied tattooed woman in a hotel room in Shanghai plotting with a stranger on the phone and a dancing dandy assassin in the corridor (The Insomniac City Cycles), people sound-synched to the barking of dogs (Everything Is Urgent), a medieval science fiction history revealed under Jerusalem (Ursulimum). Sound; With various wide activity in the Israeli underground music scene, from pioneering punk in the early 80`s and post punk in late 80`s in London, to experimental and contemporary electronica. Ran`s brief history in music includes collaborations with musicians and dance ensembles, groups, and performances with over ten solo records released on the labels Crónica, Mille Plateaux, Sub Rosa, Ak Duck, Earsay, Hed Arzi, Nana Discs. Ran has explored metal music, drum and bass, punk, ambient, glitch, experimental. His sound is restless and currently verges on drone compositions. Live video-sound; In Ran`s live performances, pulses of video and texts translate live into a visual-sound meltdown in a process of randomization. Disturbance and contradiction form a visual-musical score. Accidental esthetics form a music of chance. A custom Module, interprets video data of motion, color velocity, mouse movements into sound. The result can`t be fully predetermined. This exploration questions the true essence of live performance. Is it destined to be a repetition and presentation of a well rehearsed and predetermined score or a complete new and unforeseen event? How does video interpret into sound? What kind of meanings will it produce? Selected exhibitions, screenings and presentations include Mediations Biennale (Polin), Manifesta (Belgium), Venice Architecture Biennial, Liverpool Biennial, The Torino Film festival, Maerzmusic (Berlin) Ars Electronica [Austria, an honorary mention], Transmediale [Berlin], Deaf [Rotterdam], Rencontres Internationales [Madrid-Berlin-Paris], 9th International Istanbul Biennial, Videoformes (France) Netwerk Contemporary Art Centre [Aalst], Petah Tikva Art Museum [Israel], Museum on the Seam (Jerusalem), Gallery Givon (Israel)