David HALL British, 1937-2014
A Situation Envisaged: The Rite II (Cultural Eclipse), 1989
Fifteen monitor video installation, with sound
One Digital Betacam videotape (five sub-masters)
One set of five exhibition DVDs
One Digital Betacam videotape (five sub-masters)
One set of five exhibition DVDs
Edition of 1 plus 1 Estate Copy
'It is mysterious rather than spectacular; an ominous, authoritarian presence.. challenged only by the single picture of the moon panning silently across the sky at the centre of its shadow....
'It is mysterious rather than spectacular; an ominous, authoritarian presence.. challenged only by
the single picture of the moon panning silently across the sky at the centre of its shadow. Nature
emerges from the eclipse of technology to deny its physicality. The 'aura'.. is here given
physicalmanifestation through a construction of democratic mass media [and it] has another
meaning as a psychic identity.. By placing the moon, ruler of the irrational and the psychic, in the
central position around which the technological aura revolves, not only the authority of broadcast
television but also the perception of the physical nature of the sculpture itself is called into
question...' Chrissie Iles, Signs of the Times cat., Museum of Modern Art, Oxford 1990.
'If meaningless is the quality of TV, not of [this] work, then the work's reproduction of
meaninglessness is itself an act of signification, one with a genuine referent in the shape of the
broadcasts which it replays. Meanwhile, if the monitors don't provide us with meanings, we will
provide them ourselves: the aurora of light as smoke, as solar eclipse, as the specific palette of the
electronic painter; the monitors as the black pillar of Kubrick's 2001, as a prison in which we keep
our images, as the night sky against which the moon shines...' Sean Cubitt, Videography: Video
Media in Art and Culture, Macmillan 1993.
'In formal terms, A Situation Envisaged is striking in its prescient re-interpretation of both the
Minimalist sculpture of the 1960s, of which Hall was a part, and the post-Minimalist artistic hybridity
of the 1970s, which he helped to create... Revisited, Hall's video sculpture, made during a
theatrical, metaphorical period in the history of video installation, stands out as a strongly
conceptual work...' Chrissie Iles, 'A Situation Revisited - David Hall: A Situation Envisaged: The
Rite II (Cultural Eclipse)', Factor 1989, FACT, Liverpool 2001.
the single picture of the moon panning silently across the sky at the centre of its shadow. Nature
emerges from the eclipse of technology to deny its physicality. The 'aura'.. is here given
physicalmanifestation through a construction of democratic mass media [and it] has another
meaning as a psychic identity.. By placing the moon, ruler of the irrational and the psychic, in the
central position around which the technological aura revolves, not only the authority of broadcast
television but also the perception of the physical nature of the sculpture itself is called into
question...' Chrissie Iles, Signs of the Times cat., Museum of Modern Art, Oxford 1990.
'If meaningless is the quality of TV, not of [this] work, then the work's reproduction of
meaninglessness is itself an act of signification, one with a genuine referent in the shape of the
broadcasts which it replays. Meanwhile, if the monitors don't provide us with meanings, we will
provide them ourselves: the aurora of light as smoke, as solar eclipse, as the specific palette of the
electronic painter; the monitors as the black pillar of Kubrick's 2001, as a prison in which we keep
our images, as the night sky against which the moon shines...' Sean Cubitt, Videography: Video
Media in Art and Culture, Macmillan 1993.
'In formal terms, A Situation Envisaged is striking in its prescient re-interpretation of both the
Minimalist sculpture of the 1960s, of which Hall was a part, and the post-Minimalist artistic hybridity
of the 1970s, which he helped to create... Revisited, Hall's video sculpture, made during a
theatrical, metaphorical period in the history of video installation, stands out as a strongly
conceptual work...' Chrissie Iles, 'A Situation Revisited - David Hall: A Situation Envisaged: The
Rite II (Cultural Eclipse)', Factor 1989, FACT, Liverpool 2001.
Exhibitions
The third installation in the "Situation Envisaged" series first shown at Video Positive '89, Tate Gallery, Liverpool 1989 and later at Signs of the Times, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford 1990, Signes des Temps, Centre d'Art Contemporain, La Ferme du Buisson, Paris 1993/94 and RE: [Video Positive], FACT Gallery, Liverpool 2007.
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