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view of "Dachau, 1974", 1974. Four-channel video, dimensions variable. |
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“Dachau, 1974”
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"Dachau, 1974"
is a groundbreaking work in the history of video art. One of the
earliest multi-channel works, the images for the piece are spread
across four video monitors. Aligned in a horizontal
band, the images appear in staggered pairs, adding a new depth
to the rhythms of editing and narrative structure. In a diagram
which Korot prepared to lay out the video sequences, the video monitors
are depicted as vertical bands with the timeline of the imagery
moving from the beginning of the work (at the top of the diagram)
to the end of the work (at the bottom). The diagram itself resembles
a rug or tapestry. Korot has often compared her multi-channel video
works to the process of weaving, and in a work titled "Text
and Commentary" from 1976, this relationship was made explicit
when the artist hung five rugs from the ceiling of the gallery which
corresponded to five video monitors elsewhere in the room.
Repetition is a powerful device in "Dachau 1974," and
it finds root both visually and metaphorically. The video images
were made by the
artist in Germany while following tourists in a notorious Nazi concentration
camp. Periodically fixing the camera on the buildings around her,
at one point Korot captures the exterior of a structure with four large windows. These black windows are the same number as the
number of video monitors in the work: an eerie comparison between
a place from the past and a technology of the present. And yet Dachau
is not entirely stuck in the past as the title of the work, with
its inclusion of the date 1974, clearly reminds us. The senses are
awakened by the sound of gravel and shuffling feet, of trucks driving
by and of sounds filtering in from the distance. Presented on a
video loop, the work cycles endlessly as the camera scans the site
for the only bodies
that come to Dachau these days: tourists. With a gritty precision
reminiscent of surveillance cameras, Korot’s "Dachau 1974"
stands guard over a troubled history. |
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