The Divide Turn
Double screen projection with staggered loop, 2014, 10 mins
The sound leaks as one film ends and the other starts, to encourage the viewer to move through mirrored rooms to see alternating films.
The films are stylistic counterparts, exploring similar themes of inter-subjectivity, authorship and the effect relationships have on identity.
Landscape of Bealtaine is cinematic; Portrait of the Craftsman (view here) has roots in the TV studio. But both works use mirroring, mimicking and digging to blur boundaries between subject, viewer and artist.
“Myrid Carten’s film Portrait of the Craftsman generates an uncomfortable encounter between subject, object and maker. What starts as a relatively straightforward interaction between artist and subject centered on an attempt to connect image to memory and the recollection of a photograph of a ‘craftsman’ develops into a tense confrontation in which the camera transforms from tool to probe. By forcibly inserting maker into medium, Portrait of the Craftsman acknowledges the power imbalance implicit in film making and magnifies the invasive and manipulative potential of the camera. Considering the implied violence of the image seems especially pertinent in the context of the history of Northern Ireland, with its legacy of extensive sensationalised and biased media coverage that has defined and misrepresented it for decades.”
- Text from Curator Alissa Kleist for AMINI International Touring program 2018-19