SIGHT/SEEING
Description
SIGHT/SEEING explores our relationship with notions of wilderness in a globalised era. Part dystopic travelogue and part wildlife documentary, the piece explores our relationship the natural environment, based on received notions handed down by the mass media. Tourism has created a process of commoditization of the natural world, typified by the modern safari, based upon experience as spectacle, consumed through the lens of the domestic camcorder. The video explores a phenomenon where spectacle undermines experience, and seeing becomes secondary to recording. Increasingly absurd photographic defects and the behind-the-lens presence of the tourist move us towards a position where the romantic tourist gaze is made concrete in the recorded image; a world seen through an experiential filter that cannot be removed.
Commissioned by EMARE (European Media Artist’s Residency Exchange programme), with support from the British Council and the Ministry for Cultural Affairs, Saxony-Anhalt. Additional financial support has been provided by Arts Council England.
Additional Camera: Lata Mulchandani
Additional Voices: Lata Mulchandani
Technical Support: Jorg Drefs
Produced at Werkleitz Gesellschaft e.V., Halle, Germany
Credits
Format: SD video
Duration: 5′ 57″
Year of production: 2005