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Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Lorna Simpson, Artist

Easy To Remember, Video Installation, 2001. Watch the video on Simpson's website. Link here.

"Easy to Remember, which made its debut at the Whitney Biennial in 2002, takes its title from a 1930s Rodgers and Hart song of the same name. (The BMA version is an artist proof, or reference copy made for the artist.) The song is a bittersweet ditty about lost love and remembrance. In the 1960s, it was recorded again by the great jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, whose rendition of it provided the basis for Simpson's work. The artist invited a group of professional singers into a recording studio to hum along with Coltrane's version of the tune as they listened to it through headphones. She photographed the singers' faces with a 16 mm movie camera, then transferred the images to video and digitally edited them to create a grid consisting of 15 uniform rectangles enclosing just the singers' lips. Because the singers were recorded on different occasions, and because each singer took the opportunity to interpret the song personally, their renderings are in synch, yet individually varied. The result is a gentle, flowing meditation on the theme of unity within diversity that has a distinctly elegiac character." Glenn McNatt, Baltimore Sun Art Critic

Link here to see another site of Simpson's work.

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