#mark boulos

Mark Boulos's large-scale video installation, Echo, will be presented next month as part of his solo exhibition, Mythology at ICIA, University of Bath. The exhibition will also feature a new work, Antigone, shown in the UK for the first time.

We hope that you're able to join us for the Exhibition Preview on Thursday 23 April 2015 from 6PM to 8PM (RSVP). 

In Echo, viewers encounter a ghostly ‘reflection’ of themselves, transposed upon a documentary background of an urban landscape. As the piece unfolds, time becomes desynchronised and spatial perspective distorted and broken, to unsettling effect. Developed in collaboration with leading cognitive neuroscientist Professor Olaf Blanke, Echo continues the artist’s exploration of selfhood and otherness.

Antigone is a three-channel installation filmed in Los Angeles, in which three actresses preparing for a monologue from Sophocles’ Antigone tell three stories in unison. Each one speaks candidly from her own experience as the others voice her words, blurring the line between enacted performances and documentary accounts. The work seeks to plumb Sophocles’ paragon of classical theatre and modern critical thought to reveal the essentially asynchronous quality of subjective truths.

I went to this new installation by chance a couple of months ago with no idea what I was going to see.

You start by walking through a narrow passageway with a curtain at the end. You move the curtain to find out that the space opens out into a large room shrouded in darkness. The ceiling is black, the walls are black, the floor is black. The only illumination in the room comes from a singular spotlight pointed at the floor in the center of the room. And you are instructed to stand in the middle.

You begin to realise you are looking at a cinema screen when distorting images of the rush hour traffic and other urban elements play before you with an almost ghostly projection of yourself in the foreground.

The artist has been able to create an atmosphere as though I was behind a glass in an alternate dimension, looking into our own. Boulos in my opinion has I daresay, perfected the art of creating an atmosphere of alienation and disorientation and projecting those feelings onto the viewer.

Elements of the installation reminded me of the phantasmagoria and Pepper's Ghost, with the uncanny projections that dominated the room with their presence. However, what made this installation eerie for me was the artist's ability to utilise an everyday setting and create an element of surrealism in the ordinary.

In my opinion, one of the fundamentals of a great artist is their ability to successfully convey this message to the viewer as well as the artist's ability to instill particular feelings in them and that was the reason I thought that this project was fantastic.

(No permanent address-Mark Boulos)

When I viewed the 3 screen video installation by Boulos I sat mesmerised.  Watching different members of the New peoples Army from the Philippines on different screens while hearing the opinions of one specific member was an interesting way to encapsulate a whole microcosm. This anthropological study shown as a film links closely to work I have been creating recently. I have been working collaboratively with other fine art students to create a film piece, we merged together three different sets of footage, similar to Boulos’ work in that it was interviews of different humans opinions. However after seeing this piece I feel it would be interesting to see how they work along side eachother. His piece often depicted the elders of the army questioning the young however our videos contrast to this as we are asking our peers and elders questions.

  When visiting the Walker Gallery I found a piece of Marcus Coates work ‘Journey to the lower world’. This also showed human responses, mostly laughter and anticipation at his connection with the animal world. However in this video you see him chatting with the audience afterwards, I found it interesting that this was included as part of the piece. Sometimes showing processes helps us to have a greater understanding. When deciding what to film for our video we documented our conversation beforehand, I think it would be interesting to include some of this in the final piece as a vehicle to show our process and allow viewers a greater understanding.

I went to FACT today for the first time. They're currently showing a Mark Boulos retrospective. There were several film installations that included 3 earlier pieces in which he was exploring the "possibilities and limitations of documentary filmaking", but the one that stood out to me was 'Echo' - 2013, a complete contrast to his earlier work.

As you step in to the gallery viewing space, there is a singular spotlight with the intent for the audience to step under it. It then brilliantly relfects a translucent, ghostly image of yourself in to a video installation of the busy centre of London.

It isn't simply a mirror image though, as the film plays on your character becomes strange and develops delayed movement and an unsteady echo. The changes in the film itself are encapsulated physically through your own behaviour, well this was definitely the case for me as began to feel almost disembodied or displaced, the experience created a feeling of detachment, and left me slightly uneasy.

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air/Mark Boulos/2 screen installation Boulos’s installation All that Is Solid Melts into Air (2008), comprised of two large-scale videos, presents two communities on opposite ends of the world, each locked in a struggle to control oil.