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Peter Bogers’ video-art creates a connection with viewers

By Kurt Shaw
TRIBUNE-REVIEW ART CRITIC
Friday, September 13, 2002

 

(fragment) 

…...People-watching - we all do it. But in this simple act of self-indulgence, there are the occasional awkward moments when the people we are watching notice.
That is the theme of video artist Peter Bogers' recent video projection piece "Shared Moments." It, along with several additional works, is on display in the Dutch artist's American debut exhibition at Wood Street Galleries, Downtown.
"Usually they have some sort of suspicion that they are being filmed," Bogers says about the subjects in "Shared Moments," a large-scale video work that includes people sitting in public squares, coffee shops and train stations in Budapest; paragliders in France; and the artist's daughter sleeping in the middle of the night. Bogers secretly filmed each subject with a micro-DVD recorder, waiting for the exact moment when they noticed that he and his camera were watching.
"At some point, they check my camera," Bogers says. "They don't know if it is running or not, but they know it is there."
It is at those moments that Bogers has slowed down the resultant video fragments and accompanying audio that comprises "Shared Moments." Shown in multiples of three, six and 12 images along the back wall of the 60-foot-long gallery on the second floor, the effect is startling when you realize that all of the people the artist has videotaped are all of a sudden looking at you.
Bogers captured all the video fragments in just a few days in 1999. Later, in his studio in Amsterdam, he manipulated each of them so that, regardless of how long each person looked at Bogers' camera, all of their returned glances would last the same amount of time in the piece.
To further aid the effect, Bogers added time codes at the bottom of each video clip and, in a few - most notably at the train station - he has added audio beeps at the precise moment when the subjects glance at the camera, which brings an element of humor to the piece.
Cumulatively, all of these elements create a real sense of space and time, but in reality the only "shared moment" taking place here is between video image and viewer.
In his art, Bogers uses video like a sketchpad, capturing raw material with which he will later review and determine its use……..

 

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Watching the Watched

 

Dutch artist captures ‘Shared Moments’ at Woodstreet Galleries

By John Hayes, Post Gazette, Pittsburgh, September 2002

 

 Look! Someone's watching.

You return the glance, purely out of curiosity. The way you're being looked at will determine your next look, a series of facial signals indicating disinterest, bemusement, annoyance, anger.

Dutch video artist Peter Bogers doesn't document the relationship quite that thoroughly. He's interested in that fleeting, intimate moment of interpersonal contact when the lookee sees that the looker is looking.

In "Shared Moments," the Dutch artist's American debut, hundreds of video fragments capture the moments before randomly chosen passers-by recognize that Bogers has been secretly filming them. The look on their faces is the exhibit, installed on two floors at Wood Street Galleries.

It's a little more complicated than that. Bogers synchronizes the digital imagery so that all of his subjects recognize that they're being watched at precisely the same time. Although their returned glances originally varied in duration, Bogers stretches the moments so that their looks linger for precisely the same amount of time.

The feeling it inspires in gallery patrons is kind of weird, like suddenly realizing that everybody in the room is looking at you. But not really—it's only video.

"The interesting thing I'm looking for is people being filmed without them knowing it, but they have some feeling that there maybe something going on," says Bogers. "They check the camera. They watch. At a certain point, they are aware [they're being filmed]. This is the moment that I'm looking for." The images were recorded on a micro-DVD recorder while Bogers walked through towns in France and Hungary. There's nothing remotely polished or professional about the video images themselves. It's their cut-and-paste presentation that makes them interesting. In the primary installation, Bogers projects the multiple digital

snippets on a large video screen. Looped images of Bogers emerging and submerging in water are shown on three semi-transparent screens in a related video sculpture titled "Play-Rev-Play." ! "I am really not interested in explaining what is happening on a psychological level or how people will react," he says. "I take reality apart and put it back together again in my way. It's an illusion. Some body said, 'Movie is the presence of the absence.' So we have something

present here, but it's not there."

 

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