Sketch: a brief or hasty outline of facts, or occurrences (thank you dictionary.com)

The fun thing about art is the interpretation. I’m allowed to take someone else’s intentions and bastardize them beyond recognition. I’m allowed to say “I think…”, and be completely wrong. So I will.

I think a fair amount of human experience can be, and is, described by various attempts at making others feel/see/understand (on any level) what the world is like through alternative viewpoints. In a sense, all art, regardless of medium, is an exercise in translation (from one person to another). The film currently on display in Sketch is no different.

All deeper, more philosophical and spiritual discussions aside, for me, the experience was about personal space. Essentially, personal space (both mental and physical), is representative of an individual viewpoint. Only through outward expression are internal states rendered in such a way that previously uninvolved others will be able to experience them for themselves. Sometimes that sharing process is cathartic for all parties. But, sometimes, it’s intrusive for the receiving audience. I found the current exhibition in Sketch to be more of the latter.

When you initially walk into the room, you’re made to feel comfortable… or maybe that was just me. (Either way, since I’m allowed to say whatever I want… I think I will!) The projection, before you recognize the content, casts a soft light over white couches and walls, and even over the other people in the room. Everything blends and bleeds into everything else, like a murky under water picture. It’s an almost cocoon-like space, despite the fact that it’s a big room. But that physical comfort is absolutely compromised by the imposed visual and psychological discomfort induced by the content of the film.

The video, projected onto all four of the surrounding walls of the room, follows a young man’s physical breakdown into a grand mal seizure. Footage of his violent convulsions, juxtaposed with the spiritually inclined, relaxing, eerily calming clips of other people, leaves you wondering what message the artist is trying to convey. But ultimately, that’s not important. As a viewer, I was forced out of my mental comfort zone, and into the space of another person’s physical (and perhaps mental) experience. My reality, my immediate realm of experience, was compromised by the intrusive nature of the film. I saw through someone else’s eyes. Whether I fully understood what they were telling me is arguable. Whether I was meant to see and understand everything being presented is also arguable. No one can possibly observe all four walls at once, and yet viewers are constantly surrounded by visual information on all sides. Maybe we aren’t actually meant to see everything. Maybe that’s the point. How you perceive the world depends on your vantage point. Only through communication with others will you even begin to get out of your box.

Altogether, the film is an epileptic fit that satisfies even the most sadistic voyeuristic tendencies. Oh… and the bathrooms were pretty great, too.

- Laurel Butcher