Works I can't stop thinking about: Mariele Neudecker, Another Day, 2000
Mariele Neudecker: Another Day (Simultaneous Record of the Sun Rising and Setting in Two Opposite Locations On The Globe - South East Australia and West Azores), 2000, Two 19min DVD loops
The sheer poetry of this work astounds me. I mean we know that theoretically it would be possible to do this. That despite the vagaries of the Earth's surface, despite what are vast differences between the highest mountains and the lowest seas, the earth is still a perfectly smooth and round spheroid (geographers are fond of reminding us that if the Earth were the size of a billiard ball, it would be as smooth). With Another Day the entirety of globe is observed: 2 points of view are connected through the mutual acknowledgement of the same phenomenon at the same time--but across an impossibly vast divide. And that divide accounts precisely for the entire scope of our existence. Neudecker updates Caspar David Friederich's notion of the sublime simply by adding a second observer and in so doing suggests that achieving understanding--if possible at all--can't occur from the privileged position of the singular eye, but may only happen at the junctions between us.
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I am fortunate to be included in a group show with Neudecker, curated by Celina Jeffery that is slated for 2011. It's called Preternatural.
For more work by Neudecker, visit her site at http://www.marieleneudeker.co.uk
