In magnet, as in Kim Pieters’ other moving image works, the footage is slowed and the image stutters and blurs. This black and white work shows a power station and dam in the Waitaki Valley, between Oamaru and Twizel. The opening images are of power pylons, and their attendant cables, connectors, and wiring. At sixteen minutes, the image shifts to a concrete dam with water, blown by the wind, crashing and pouring over it in waterfalls; the effect is mesmerising, painterly, the water appears as rivers of white paint.
In this work, as in others, Pieters collaborates with musician Stephen Clover, whose arcing, sustained music provides acts, or chapters, to the work, as the sound shifts and changes. The soundtrack is a full album by Clover, The Green Morning (2006).
In an interview with Hamish Clayton to accompany her 2014 solo show at the Adam Art Gallery, what is life?, Pieters states that her audiovisual work often starts with the sound, which is made autonomously from the image, after which she selects an accompanying image from her extensive archive of digital video and photography. Previously, the visual elements have been shown as supplements to music performances but have since become works in their own right.
