Surely one of the greatest pleasures of new media art centers on disorientation, something that video/installation artist Jennifer Steinkamp achieves quite nicely. The LA-based artist's dazzling abstract video installations layer viewers into large-scale moving images, sandwiching them between multiple projections of lush, dancing pixels and a sea of sound. Steinkamp claims many influences, including the 1930s abstract animations of Oskar Fischinger, the light and space artists of the '60s, and Gene Youngblood's seminal book Expanded Cinema. In short though, Steinkamp, who teaches in the Design | Media Arts program at UCLA, uses light to "dematerialize" architecture, basically creating alternate spaces within "real" spaces. As viewers move around in one of her projection pieces, they become part of the installation, their shadows strangely stepping away from their proper placement in relationship to the body. The projections effectively dissolve a sense of solid, Cartesian space, and the result is a wonderful, giddy sensation, as if your body and the space around you no longer behave according to the fundamental rules of physics.
This year's Cairo Biennale, which opened on Sunday, features Steinkamp's 2004 three-channel projection piece titled Dervish, in an updated form. In the piece, three trees move in various rhythms, dancing in an unfelt wind. As with many of Steinkamp's projects, the viewing experience merges a sense of wonder and physical engagement as you become very aware of your own body in the space with the trees. For the show in Cairo, Steinkamp includes three prints, also of trees, adding to a line of simulations, each one contributing to a chain of references that leave behind the real world.
Steinkamp's exhibition is part of an eclectic showcase of LA art and culture at the Biennale organized by the director of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House Kimberli Meyer. A panel discussion titled "Other Sides of the World" will bring together artist, critic and My Barbarian member Malik Gaines; artist and curator Sherin Guirguis; and curator/collector Chip Tom. An animation screening curated by CalArts faculty memb,er Maureen Furniss showcases a selection of international animated shorts. And the "Extra-Biennial Blog" offers running commentary on the trip. The highlight, though, for me anyway, would be standing among those three moving, projected trees.
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