Thin Cities
1999
colour, silent
5 channel
5 video projectors, 5 media players,
5 rear projection screens each 1.84 x 1.36 m
Fiona Tan explores the genre of the portrait as a tool for
categorizing the “Other.” In Thin Cities she presents footage of
groups —mainly indigenous people— in which she plays with
the combination of film and photography. Tan calls these scenes
“photographic moments” because they extend the exposure time
of the people in front of the video camera so that they can act
with greater naturalness, with the resulting image overcoming the
frequent coldness of the photos.
In this five-screen video installation —as in most of the artist’s
works— the viewer’s sensation of space is very important.