The Senses: Play in Camera  
 

1992
A 4 Monitor video installation
3 monitors displaying English subtitles, one extra with surveillance camera
Super 8 film edited on lo-band Umatic video, 7 minutes 9 seconds, repeated 8 times for a 1-hour auto rewind tape

This video installation was made at Sheffield Hallam University during the Colin Walker Fellowship in Fine Art, a year's teaching residency, (GB)

A documentation of Play in Camera (trailer 2:40 minutes) was made with material filmed by Nick Stewart at the Colin Walker Fellowship exhibition, Sheffield Hallam University 1992, edited on DVD by Rainer Nelissen 2009

A single screen DVD with German subtitles and trailer of 10 minutes was produced in 2009, edited by Mirco Sanftleben (Pixel 2 Motion) (D). The spectators are also filmed during the presentation; the material is screened live next to the DVD images.

Further works in the series The Senses are:
The Senses: Play it by Ear & An Ear for You (sense of sound)
The Senses: Ô d’Oriane (sense of smell)
The Senses: Zucchini (sense of taste)
The Senses: Intimacy (sense of touch)
 

Play in Camera presents the spectator with repeated and repetitive video images of three protagonists on three separate screens. There is no soundtrack but English subtitles appear under the video portraits. The texts are taken from two plays, alternately: 'In Camera' by Jean-Paul Sartre 1944 and 'Play' by Samuel Beckett 1962-63. On the fourth screen the viewer is seen captured live, by surveillance camera. The video installation is about reflection and self-reflection. In both the cited pieces the characters are trapped in an after-life struggle coming to terms with themselves. Their lives have all ended badly because of selfish behaviour. In a halfway house between life and death, three characters in two different plays, are condemned for eternity, to relive the most troubled moments of their personal relationships.

Tanya Ury
 
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