Sniper Version 2

Creator:

Pictorial Heroes

Contributor(s):

  • Sandra Christie

  • This work is part of the rewind archive.

    Duration: 15mins

    Year: 1988

    Original formats:

    3/4" U-Matic Hi Band

    Media types:

    Video

    Type of work:

    Single Screen

    Funding source: Scottish Arts Council Video BursaryDuncan of Jordanstone College of Art facilities

    First exhibited: 1988 Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

    Technical details: Re-edit of original 'Sniper' piece First Pictorial Heroes piece to use 2 chip camera as opposed to tube camera. Quantel Paintbox used in production

    An extract from a television commercial:
    ‘An event seen from one angle gives one impression. Seen from another angle it gives quite a different impression. But its only when you get the whole picture that you can really see what’s going on.’

    Sniper explores in a series of short episodes, actions, gestures and images, a number of themes of a broad cultural and political nature. In particular, these are the notions of a media of surveillance and the jigsaw nature of interpreting events and experiences. By using both the media itself and the performers as framing devices and reference to both real and fictional episodes, Sniper explores the fragmentary nature of broadcast information.

    In adopting an episodic structure characterised by short bursts of data and energy, Sniper also creates the sensation of several storylines happening at once. These many levelled narratives, their locations and characters, and even the technology itself, eventually converge, conflict and contract, presenting a spectacle of the transience and transparancy of mass communication.

    Sourced from Doug Aubrey’s personal archives.


    Sniper-version 2, Pictorial Heroes, Catalogue of Video Tapes, 1993. pdf here


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