kaz
Crossroad, 2017
Single video projection installation with 5 x sheet glass
crossroad is a video installation which uses a single video shot on location at a well know pedestrian crossing in Shibuya, Tokyo.
The video (4'11" loop) is projected onto, and through sheets of glass, creating multiple moving images on one wall as the beam of the projector is reflected off each of the 5 glass sheets. On the opposite wall, a single ‘regular’ moving image can be seen as the same beam travels through glass.
Video used in crossroad is of the entire crossing, shot from a distance, where the movements of cars, advertising screens and people can be seen. It is what Delueze & Guattari describes as striated space (optical/distant vision/concrete line) in ‘A Thousand Plateaus’, where there is perspective and is bound by space-time continuum.
Projected image which goes through the glasses also has the characteristics of a striated space. The reflected multiple images resemble that of a kaleidoscope and has the properties of smooth space (haptic/close vision/abstract line), where the viewpoint changes continuously and lacks a sense of direction.
By presenting both the striated and the smooth space within the same space, crossroad examines the relationship between the two spaces which are seemingly in opposition, and explores the notion that 'the two spaces in fact exist only in mixture’*.
*G. Deleuze & F. Guattari, ‘A Thousand Plateaus’