Peter Wareing

Utility Black (2 screen version) (2011)

33 min 22 sec2 channel installation / Sound / Digital Video / Colour / Sound

"Since the mid 1990s, I began a loose video diary of my neighborhood, the East Village in Lower Manhattan as it was undergoing serious gentrification, not dissimilar to other parts of Brooklyn and Queens boroughs. I was drawn to the lives of those living in the margins against the hyped, celebrity culture most often portraying this city.

'Utility Black (2)' uses methods of splitting images between interior and exterior realities to emphasize the clash between the lives of tenants and the exterior political and financial circumstances that impose themselves onto the lives of these individuals. Various sources of materials intermingle from newspaper clippings, to documentary footage, to restaged real stories of fellow residents of my tenement building on East 8th Street with elements of the fantastical and absurd."

Artist's statement

Other works by Peter Wareing

CIRCUIT is the
leading voice
for artist moving image
practice
in Aotearoa New Zealand,
distributing works,
critical review and
dialogues
which reflect our unique, contemporary
South Pacific context.