LIMEN II

2006

Installation, performance, newsprint paper, video projection, live and recorded sound

Dimensions variable

ARTIST STATEMENT

The word limen in Greek means “threshold, “ “limit,” and “meadow.” The installation takes place in two rooms (front and back) connected by a narrow door. In the back gallery sheets of newsprint paper cover an elevated triangular fragment of the ground. Onto this sculptural and ephemeral environment I lie down and draws around my body. A video camera suspended from above becomes a source of images projected in the front room. The angle of the camera permits the image to appear as two-dimensional, suggesting a shift in perceiving the vertical and horizontal aspects of space. Site-specific sound composition includes sounds of drawing and paper movement recorded on site.

Through the act of lying down on the ground and outlining my body, followed by the act of gathering the scattered papers—fragments of sculpture, fragments of drawing—the installation remains a site of flux and passage. I am interested in combining several kinds of time and spatial relations--parallel and overlapping. There is the time of the performance and of live video, which are both separated by the wall and are about a shift of view from the horizontal and visceral body/sculpture to the vertical and virtual projection. Another time is implied by the act of moving the papers between the two spaces. What seemed to be separated in its origin is now living together in one space, related through memory, recollection.

Repetitive sound, which functions as a trace of the event, suggests a kind of circular time similar to that of the video image; both are altered and edited in my studio. The surface of paper and the surface of our skin bear unsettling similarities. Newsprint paper is a vulnerable material, prone to crumble, crack and wrinkle over time and under the pressure of my body and of the charcoal/graphite sticks. The sound of its crackling and breaking results from the process of drawing and applying great force onto the multiple layers of paper. It sounds like both burning fire and rippling water.

ESSAY

Monika Weiss crafts a new breed of total artwork that does not adhere to the rules. Hers is a living, breathing experience comprising mediums of drawing, video, live performance, sound, composition, installation, voice and sculpture infused with history, literature and poetry. Weiss systematically sets up the conditions of a cosmos of her own creation and then intervenes upon this configuration using her own body and actions. She welcomes others to do the same and also invites chance natural elements to alter the system. Then she carefully modulates the visual and audio outcome, reassembling the moments and visual fragments to make something altogether new. (Katherine Carl, Monika Weiss - Drawing Cosmos, 2006)

To read the entire essay click here and here.

EXHIBITIONS

Monika Weiss: Limen II, curated by Florence Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, New York, 2006

Moment by Moment. Meditations of the Hand, curated by Barbara Hatfield and Hanne Tierney, North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, ND, 2006-2007