Analytical Review Of 'Commute' By Richard Long

Analytical Review of ‘Commute’ Project

‘The city is transformed into a texturology in which extremes coincide - extremes of ambition and degradation, brutal oppositions of races and styles, contrasts between yesterday’s buildings, already transformed into trash cans, and today’s urban irruptions that block out its space’.

In this essay I intend to analyse my creative project ‘Commute’ which I created whilst being inspired by a number of texts and exhibitions I encountered over the course of the year. I intend to explore the background of video theory and discuss the piece of work I have created in context to texts on fiction and reality, memory and remembering and framing. Film as a form is a ‘construction of sequences which are made up

I visited his exhibition ‘Time and Space’ last November at the ‘Arnolfini’ in Bristol and enjoyed his documentary style of installation and sculpture. Long is considered to be one of the most influential sculpture artists of his generation; he won the Turner Prize in 1989 and has since been producing revolutionary conceptual sculptures and installations. The artist’s personal relationship to place and walking alone in landscape is the core concept in his exhibition ‘Time and Space’. However, ‘his walks are limited by capabilities of the human body. The body becomes the ‘natural material’ that dictates the nature the artwork’. This relates to my own work as walking was a central element of the creative process. I intended to select locations that mirror the immediate experience of the different locations I encountered, much like Long’s own

Better known for her colourful paintings, Adnan had produced a 92 minute film titled ‘Motion’ which I was most captivated by. Created between 1980 and 1989, it is the artists’ film debut which depicts a ‘Super 8’ collage of scenes shot in New York in the 60s; a ‘silent unfurling of cityscapes, skies and sunsets’. I enjoyed the low-fi quality of the film and the way in which it was shot. It had, for the most part, an overlay of a green effect which added to its strange sense of ominosity. The movement of the film was very jarring as was the movement between frames which caused a sense of disruption. The sound was grainy; it was quiet and humming with the odd sound of a ship’s fig horn. I intended to create a sound that was similar to that of Adnan’s; distorted background noises incorporating familiar sounds from the city, such as the sound of transport