Video excerpt of ‘dig’:
‘dig’
Performance/ Single Channel Video
Duration: 12 Minutes
2005
‘dig’ is a single shot video work in which the artist literally falls from the sky into the video’s frame, landing on the peak of a mountain where he proceeds to dig a hole in the snow for twelve consecutive minutes. While referring directly to the relationship between environment and artist, the piece restores the aesthetic and technical formalization of early video works from the 1970s.
Shot against the spectacular coast mountain range near Whistler, British Columbia, ‘dig’ actualizes the artist impressing himself upon his environment, carving out a space to leave a mark of presence, passing and excavation. Rather than producing something new and imposing in this environment, ‘dig‘ performs a kind of recycling of media and a reshaping of landscape to suggest that this kind of re-contextualization can also be a form of production.