Nathalie Bookchin's Mass Ornament on exhibition at Smith College

March 17–July 9, 2017

https://www.smith.edu/artmuseum/On-View/Video-and-New-Media-Gallery

Natalie Bookchin. American, born 1950
Mass Ornament. 2009
HD digital video with five channels of sound
Purchased with the Rebecca Morris Evans, class of 1932, Acquisition Fund
SC 2016:42

Running time: 7 minutes 12 seconds
In Mass Ornament, a video installation from 2009, I edited videos of people dancing alone in their rooms, to create a mass dance reminiscent of historical representations of synchronized masses of bodies in formation, from Busby Berkeley to Leni Riefenstahl. I wanted the work to continually shift between depictions of masses and that of individuals. The dancers, alone in their rooms, seem to perform the same movements over and over as if scripted. But at the same time their bodies don’t conform to mass ideals, and their sometimes awkward interpretations undermine the ‘mass ornament’ produced by synchronizing their movements. I added sounds of bodies moving about in space, thumping, banging and shuffling, as well as ambient sound emphasizing geographical differences, from crowded urban dwellings to the suburbs. Dancers push against walls and slide down doorways, as if attempting to break out of or beyond, the constraints of the rooms in which they seem to be encased.—Natalie Bookchin"