< back The watch, the escapement, and the marginal sea 6-minute video installation This installation presents a story of virtual presences and inundation: of vision saturated by the desire to see, and by almost seeing; of an immersion of being into an arbitrary flow of time and space; and of currents between partial spaces and routes of escape. A curious sort of refraction takes place in the encounter of see and the sea in which this story takes place: a sense of vision altered just so; a sense of time that seems to be more fluid; a sense of movement with strange properties; a sense of a shift into the space of the unfamiliar. Here, the steady flow and mesmerizing cadence of the projected "timepiece" have only a passing relation to time as it is kept outside of the room. A figure passes at intervals through the projected space, but if one watches closely, fleeting shadows hint more subtly at the world beyond the margins of what can be seen. And as the water level rises, muting the visible spectrum between spaces, the sound continues to escape. An assemblage of breath and voice, it provides the audio counterpart to the operation and refraction of the gaze between worlds on both sides of the wall. Kelly Kirshtner Kelly Kirshtner received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently working on a PhD at the University of California, Irvine where she is a founding editor of the visual studies journal, Octopus. Her dissertation research focuses on sound in film, and has a title that sounds something like "Strange Microphones." Kelly currently lives, makes work, and teaches Film and Conceptual Studies in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Contact Information 414-688-5200