SINGLE CHANNEL VIDEO PROJECTION - ACT I of III
& INSTALLATION (OBJECTS + WORKS ON PAPER)
2023

Pierrot in the Air Horn, Act I: Wind Tunnel is a large scale, single channel video projection and the first installment of a three part project that charts the progression through an imagined interior of an air horn. The first act takes place in a conical horn-like space to be followed by connecting chambers deeper in the structure’s interior (Act II & III, forthcoming). Shot in miniature, the conical space functions as a wind tunnel populated with kinetic devices made out of bits of studio remnants and refuse, filmed to create a paradoxical feeling of eternal industrial monumentality and power. The camera pushes down the airhorn, punctuated by short, mimetic performances by Pierrot, a rudimentary puppet made out of firewood, inspired by the archetypal melancholic clown from Commedia dell’arte's stock cast of characters.

Pierrot in the Air Horn is a meditation on (non)human subjectivity and mechanic animism. The only humans featured are the puppeteers, visible but shrouded entirely in black in the manner of Japanese Bunraku theater, tasked solely with animating the wooden puppet Pierrot. Per the title, the structure is modeled after an airhorn, an object that is both a clown's noisemaker and signal of alarm. There is no language, only the mechanical analogue for voice; compressed air through a diaphragm. The camera, and Pierrot, push against the wind and into the belly of this device where the human takes a back seat to inert materials that eternally animate.