Dimension 1–4

Description

"Marcolla’s reflection bore the fruit of four video works created in the studio of TVP Łódź in 1975: Dimension 1, 2, 3 and 4. The videos lasted from 5 to 15 minutes, but unfortunately they are known today only from photographic documentation. Invited to participate in the IV International Open Encounter on Video at the Centro de Arte y Communication in Buenos Aires, the artist sent the only existing copy of the material, which she never received back. What remained is a set of photographs, which has not only a purely documentary value, but also demonstrates something more than the works themselves – it is a record of the activity of a woman artist in the 1970s in Poland. The preserved photographs show her focussed, looking into the camera lens to check if everything works or taking part in her own projects as a participant-performer. The works were created in a television studio, but they were never aired – it wasn’t her intention. In her situation it was impossible – a person not affiliated with the television society and environment, had no opportunity to broadcast her own tv-show. Marcolla’s Dimensions are video-installations on the basis of which we can analyse the phenomenon of transmission; their function was rather that of ‘mock-ups’ that illustrated the operating principle of television transmission.
Dimension 1 featured two people: the artist and a studio employee, sitting on two sides of a wall. On each side, there was a camera and a monitor; the camera transmitted the image from behind the wall onto the monitor. The participants could talk to each other, but only in a mediated way. As Marcolla wrote in the script of the work:
The video camera transmits that secondary situation to the monitor. Three elements: video monitor which transmits the situation, TV set which shows a specific programme, and a general view of the studio are recorded on video. A situation is created in which two people contact one another only by means of cameras and monitors. Camera A, which records the face of one person, transmits it to monitor A1 available only to the other person. In an analogous manner, camera B transmits the image of the other person to monitor B2. Each of the people has one camera/recording and one monitor/transmitting the image of the partner’s face/within their field of vision. A partition is installed between the two people, which separates them. The entire setup is recorded with a video camera.
The other three works were also based on the phenomenon of transmission. In Dimension 2, the artist was sitting between two monitors which displayed the transmitted image of her face; in the following work, a monitor displayed the transmitted image of the artist taking photographs of the studio, whereas the last work from the cycle consisted in a transmission to the monitor of the image of the artist and, subsequently, all studio employees in her company.
Several months later, in November 1975, the works were shown at the CAYC. Marcolla was the only Polish woman artist who participated in that presentation. The only existing copies of the tape were never returned to her."
(Source, pdf, Instytut Polski)

Additional Informations

View still images from the work on the artist's website

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