Yet Another Triangle
Creator:
Critchley, DavidContributor(s):
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First recording - Stuart Marshall and Keith Frake, Re-recorded for technical reasons with David Hall and Tony Sinden before the 1975 Serpentine Video Show. Subsequently performed again with Peter Anderson and Iain Robertson at University College in 1980. With David Milliken and Barbara X at Brentford School 1998 and again with Carolyn Antell and Daniel Mundy 2003.
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Duration: 20 Mins repeated
Year: 1975
Original formats:1/2 inch EIAJ reel-to-reel + low density 1/2 inch
Type of work:3 Screen video installation
Installation
Video Performance
Funding source: Self / state
First exhibited: 1975 The Video Show - Serpentine Gallery, London
“First performed and recorded at Newcastle Polytechnic Sports Hall – re-recorded to be all on the same format at Maidstone School of Art, outdoors in 1975. Recorded again on U-matic portables in 1980. Again on Hi-8 in 1995 and again on Mini DV in 2003. The physical equipment does make a difference to the look of the piece, but the action is essentially in the form it was first made. A form of working to a set of instructions.
‘Yet Another Triangle’ was my first exhibited video installation, and was shown at The Video Show at the Serpentine Gallery in 1975. Stuart Marshall, Keith Frake and myself recorded it for the first time in a gym in Newcastle upon Tyne. Because the various formats used to record on were incompatible with the equipment available at the Serpentine, the whole piece was re-made with David Hall and Tony Sinden at Maidstone, out on a football field using Sony Rovers, (sounds like the name of a team!).
The piece is very active and puts each performer in an unstable relationship with the others, making for constant competitive movement. Each performer has the instruction, “Keep the other two in shot (frame)”. As the angle of the lenses is less than sixty degrees, the instruction can only be carried out successfully by two of the performers at any one time.
Viewers are given a similar problem to the recording performers as Yet Another Triangle is shown on three monitors facing inwards from the points of an equilateral triangle with sides of about five meters long. Only any two monitors can be seen at any one time, so a viewer is forced to turn and move in order follow the action, while being aurally aware of the movement and conversation between the performers.
I see Yet Another Triangle more as a set of instructions to be followed rather than a fixed, finished piece of work. I have made it three more times since the Video Show – at the Slade in 1981 with Peter Anderson and Iain Robertson, again at Brentford School in 1996 with Barbara Kerr and David Milliken, and in 2003 with Caroline Antell and Daniel Mundy. The first three versions no longer exist.” David Critchley
Further Known Screenings:
1980 University College London
1998 Brentford School -