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The Invisible World | Jesse McLean | 3 – 16 Nov

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The Invisible World | Jesse McLean

What happens to our things after we are gone? In this video, materialism, emotional presence and the adaptive nature of human beings are broadly considered through the lens of time.

A variety of materials are collected and collaged (including home movies, internet videos, Sci­fi seventies films, and an extensive archive of photographed objects), revealing the filmmaker’s own hoarding tendencies. YouTube genres are parsed, including ‘haul’ videos (where contributors display the results of a shopping spree) and unboxing videos (where a new purchase is unwrapped). From an outsider’s perspective, the material is pasted together like the unexplainable possessions of a hoarder’s collection. The results not only show our desperate need to own things, but also how that desire is often paired with the need to relate to others, be it face to face, or through online media channels. Anyone who’s seen even only part of an episode of a TV show on hoarders, might be familiar with one of many hoarders’ tendencies: to fill a hole in one’s chest, whatever its root cause may be, by surrounding oneself with object after object that quickly become uncontrollable piles of junk that burst out of rooms and corridors.

The present world is packed with objects that evidence human productivity, yet the desire to possess things, the reason to want to own useless objects beyond their use and meaning, remains somewhat mysterious. Lifeless objects become imbued with emotional significance, and possessions are linked with personal identities, because of our cultural upbringing, or lack thereof. As McLean related in an interview with BOMB magazine, “It’s this longing to belong and realizing that you’re part of this, even though it might be against your will at times. (…) A lot of those objects are things I inherited. I didn’t want any of them. Now, I love them (…) I know all the names of the patterns. You never really understand how you get all this information or this family history, but that’s something that fascinates me—systems that comprise us and contain us at the same time.”

HD Video, 2012, 17’57”

Bio Jesse McLean is a media artist whose research is motivated by a deep curiosity about human behavior and relationships, and is concerned with both the power and the failure of the mediated experience to bring people together. She has presented her work at museums, galleries, and film festivals worldwide, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Rome Film Festival, Italy, Venice Film Festival, both Italy; Transmediale, Berlin; 25 FPS Festival, Zagreb, Croatia; European Media Arts Festival, Osnabrück, Germany; Impakt, Utrecht, The Netherlands; CPH:DOX, Copenhagen; Images Festival; Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, Kassel, Germany; Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow; BIOS, Athens, Greece;  CCCB, Barcelona, Spain; Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis; Interstate Projects, PPOW Gallery, both New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; Gallery 400, Three Walls, both Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. She was the recipient of a Jury Prize (First Prize) in the International Competition at the 2013 Videoex Festival, Zürich, Switzerland, received the Ghostly Award for Best Sound Design at the 2012 Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the Overkill Award at the 2011 Images Festival and the Barbara Aronofsky Latham Award for Emerging Experimental Video Artist at the 2010 Ann Arbor Film Festival.

www.jessemclean.com

Date: november 03, 2014