Friday Morning (2006)

Developed directly from the concerns of the photo-based Light series, Friday Morning, a five-minute looping video, evokes multiple layers of time and place through video imagery and sound. Three different sites and time periods intersect, creating multiple, simultaneous narratives. Moving patterns of light and shadow on an Ottawa street one summer are layered with black and white historical footage from 1903 of a fish market in the Lower East Side of New York City, with varying parts of each video sometimes hidden and sometimes brought into view. In addition to the fluid and constantly changing flow of imagery, affected by the movement inherent in each original video source, the medium also allows for experimentation with multiple audio components. Sounds of late summer – the steady hum of insects, the drone of a lawnmower, the rustling of a breeze and the call of birds – are intermixed with the cacophony of sounds and voices from a bustling market in present-day Frankfurt. A layered soundscape is created by the differing intensities of each track, with one audio track sometimes foregrounded over the other. The circularity of the video loop offers the potential to more fully perceive and integrate narrative fragments from each of the three different sources with successive, repeated viewings over time.