EUGENE, ORE.- The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art has opened “Movin’ On,” an installation by artist Michelle Given that is contingent upon viewer participation. “Movin On” is on view in the Artist Project Space through Sunday, August 27, 2012.
“Movin’ On” explores memory, nostalgia, and responsibility, according to the artist. “Your films hold once-in-a-lifetime moments you’ll never be able to recapture,” says Given. “Once destroyed, they cannot be replaced.”
Constructed with a 16 mm projector, family movies, a paper shredder, and a timer, viewers activate the projector to watch the footage from someone else’s vintage home movie, but in doing so, they are complicit in the destruction of the film.
Viewers must start the projector (timed to thirty second intervals) to see the old family movies, which then automatically go through a shredder. The nostalgia traditionally associated with viewing old family films is undermined by the shredder’s jarring sound. While the destruction of these vintage home movies is sad and unsettling, it also elevates each film clip, as it is the last time it will ever be viewed. The alternative for most of these lost and discarded films is to lay unwatched and degrading in cardboard boxes in closets, basements, and attics.
“As an artist I am concerned with investigating the distance between things,” says Given in her artist statement. “The distance from oneself, from one’s environment, from other people, as well as the disconnect between psychological and physiological experience.”
In addition to her interactive installation, Given will teach a JSMA middle school and high school summer art classes from July 30 to August 3, teaching alternative photo processes and mixed media design.
Michelle Given is a photographer and video artist. Currently, she is an assistant professor and the Head of Photography at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. She earned her Photography Masters of Fine Arts from Indiana University in 2008 and holds two Bachelors of Arts from Otterbein University.
Most recently, Given’s work has been shown at Gallery Project and WORK in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Perspective Gallery in Chicago, Illinois; the Miller Gallery in Columbus, Ohio; the Craft Studio Gallery in Columbia, Missouri; the Midwest Center for Photography in Wichita, Kansas; Daegu University in Seoul, Korea; and Galerie Huit in Arles, France during Les Rencontres d’Arles Photography Festival. In 2010, she had a solo exhibition at Gallery Tosei-sha in Tokyo. Last November, she had a second solo exhibition in Tokyo at the Shinjuku Nikon Salon, which traveled to the Osaka Nikon Salon in March of this year.
