Simone Jones, Lance Winn: End Of Empire

Title:

End Of Empire

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Creation Year:

2011

Medium:

Kinetic sculpture/video installation

Artist Statement:

Andy Warhol’s real-time eight hour film Empire (1964) heralded the onset of structural film as an artistic medium; since taken up by Michael Snow,
Anthony McCall and Douglas Gordon, among others. Empire consists of an unadorned shot of the Empire State Building and captures what was the ultimate symbol of the New York City skyline. Simone Jones and Lance Winn revisit Empire from a post-9/11, post financial-collapse perspective. End of Empire is a custom-built, robotic projection machine that projects a 14-minute video inspired by Warhol’s film. The robot’s motorized camera arm enables the frames’ movement and projects a black-and-white video image of the Empire State building across the gallery wall and ceiling, and then reverses back to its original position to eventually reveal its disappearance from the skyline. Never seen in its entirety, the viewer has to piece together their perception of the film as it unfolds over time and across the physical space of the gallery. The projection machine, with its numerous progenitors – from 19th century optical instruments to Edward Ihnatowicz’s Senster – cheekily involves the audience who must move around the machine to fully view the image, thereby enrolling them in its forlorn search for the absent skyscraper.