Ann Burke Daly
INSTALLATION SPECIFICATIONS & DESCRIPTION 'In the Wilderness (cusp)', 2000-01, still sequence from a video installation In a darkened and windowless room: video projections inside the room's four walls run in a stuttering and staggered sequence. No sound. Footage shot within an extant hedge labyrinth (Hampton Court, London), digitally manipulated and altered to high key color saturation, emphasizing framing and speed. The camera moves in extreme slow motion from multiple points of view in the hedge maze. The cut sequences are further delayed through looping, creating numerous permutations. From any place within the installation, a viewer's focus is challenged by moving images caught in his/her peripheral vision, beckoning a glance from here to there (similar to the experience of shifting voices when one is inside a labyrinth). A whole image is impossible to achieve or sustain. This work's title refers to the portion of formal gardens called the "wilderness" - a section of the garden altered to emulate the "wild" or "untamed" portions of landscape outside of the garden proper - an artificial wilderness in which the hedge labyrinth would be situated and discovered. PROJECT DESCRIPTION 'In the Wilderness (cusp)' is part of the ongoing project 'Looking for the Labyrinth (re-collecting Versailles)', a group of installations which re-imagine lost or destroyed portions of the garden of Versailles known only through writings, prints, and paintings. These works utilize a variety of media often employing existing materials (film, objects, photographs) which are altered in terms of context, pacing, and scale. This project is part of a larger inquiry concerned with the psychological and social space of gardens and landscape architecture emphasizing disorientation, disarray, entropy, and anxiety within a theater of (failed and continuously shifting) order and display. "In the ear's labyrinth the voice doth stray"--(Shakespeare) Ann Burke Daly New York, January 23, 2026 |
