December 20 – 27, 2011
Video Installations
Borey Art Center
St. Petersburg, Liteyny Prospekt 58
“LIFT”, 2001
Anna Frants / Cyland Media Lab
New York and Saint Petersburg
Americans use the word “elevator” for a device that Russians and English call a “lift”. But whatever it’s called, essentially it’s a lifting device – something that lifts us off the ground, and like the mythological Antaeus, we temporarily lose our strength when detached from the ground. In this installation, a video projector, screeching along a rail and projecting the video of an elevator shaft on the wall, reminds us of this anxiety. However, we see slides that a pair of old Kodak projectors display at our feet level, and these impressions firmly keep us grounded.
“GRAVITY”, 2011
Anna Frants
Old cathode ray tubes, ropes, animation
Presented by the author
In this installation, the artist successfully combines two incompatible technologies – analog and digital. A pixel descends on the screen of an old television tube, as if obeying gravity, the same force that acts on the tube itself, which does not fall to the floor only because it is suspended from the ceiling. In this case, both the outdated bulky cathode ray tube and the ultra-modern smallest visual element obey the same law as Newton’s apple.
“ACROBATS”, 2011
Anna Frants / Cyland Media Lab
New York and Saint Petersburg
The screen displays frame-by-frame photography by Eadweard Muybridge – exercises of acrobats. More than a century ago, Muybridge was engaged in the sequential study of motion, its fixation and representation, and invented the “zoopraxiscope” – a device for projecting films that existed before the advent of celluloid film.
Ancient clamps fixed on the edge of a plywood sheet demonstrate their own metal acrobatics. Athletes show what a trained body is capable of. Tense human muscles and tightly screwed iron bolts of clamps – living nude people and mechanical “acrobat” tools try to outdo each other.
Anna Frants is a multimedia artist living in New York. Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where in 1989 she graduated from the Mukhina Academy of Arts, receiving a solid classical education, she then expanded her interests, mastering new areas such as computer imaging and animation.
Her achievements reflect the wide spectrum of the artist’s interests. Anna has already received several top awards for the best three-dimensional computer animation at prestigious computer graphics competitions, such as the AutoDesk Planet Studio Award. She has participated in and curated numerous art exhibitions in the USA and Russia, taught media disciplines and animation for several years, and has published articles on art. Her works can be found in the Museum of Contemporary Art Kyoseino Sato (Japan) and in private collections.