Marie Shannon

What I Am Looking At (2011)

7 min 10 secSingle channel / Digital Video / Black & White / Sound

What I Am Looking At takes its title from Julian Dashper’s 1993 work, What I Am Reading at the Moment—a library chair with a pile of every issue of Art Forum to 1993.

The video uses rolling text with simultaneous voiceover to describe the contents of an artist’s studio and the work that needs to be done to make sense and create order once the artist is no longer there. The text describes categories and lists of objects: the precious, the mundane and the baffling.

“I was interested in making a video that only used text, and also in the idea of the redundant voiceover, reading aloud or telling the viewer what they are reading. In dealing with very emotive material, it was important for me to find a neutral way of describing it.”

Artist's statement

Other works in this series

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