Stop >< Motion

No matter what medium I’m using, I like to work with Time. I see it as a kind of collaborator. Sometimes I accept what it gives me without question, spending hours patiently waiting for new forms to develop. Other times I make Time conform to my parameters. (I decide, without equivocation, when a piece will be done—even before I start.) With my Stop: Motion videos, I’m combining a bit of both.

When I make these videos I always work alone, setting my camera on a tripod, its shutter speed calibrated to shoot at an average rate of one frame for every two seconds (depending on lighting, the effects I want, etc.). I ‘perform’ before the camera in any number of ways, most of them mundane. (It’s my philosophy that simple methods often yield the most rich, and complex, results.) Later, in the editing process, I insert more ‘space’ into the narrative.

The results can sometimes be quite humorous, and are always unexpected. Real life, when sped up/slowed down, is often more fun than fiction.

CARDBOARD FRAME, 2011

Berlin 2011, Running Time 1:21

So many boxes and papers lay around my new apartment when I moved to Berlin that I had to engage with them. In this piece I utilized a box-frame that surrounded a mirror I bought from IKEA. I didn’t have to alter it at all to make it look like a traditional frame: that was its purpose; but, I wondered, what other purposes could it hold? Cardboard is so malleable; it can make many different shapes, and, I found, could even be worn. At times the frame conforms to the shape of my body; sometimes, it’s the other way around. What, or who, is the reflection now? Ultimately, we do a kind of dance together, and in the process I feel a bit more at home with not knowing what new things may lay ahead of me—both in the City, and in my work.

EXERCISES

Lithuania 2010, Running Time 3:59

The audio track repeats: ‘”I don’t know what I’m doing,” and I suppose that, literally, it may seem the same for me. However, amidst the diversity of imagery, it’s my daily habit that rules. I eat my food, I stretch, I get dressed, I go out to work/come back home, eat again—and play around with/make the most of/ whatever objects lie around my apartment. Soon the audio sings, “You got me going round…” and outside my window, the small town in Lithuania (in which I grew up) continues its day, too. Time passes; my body makes shapes almost like a metronome. I mark time by freezing it with my camera, and I find that funny things occur. Sometimes it’s best to ‘do’ first, and analyze later: to exercise first your body, and then your mind.