An androgynous head is projected as if contained within a minimalist cube. Sounds of the head slowly breathing fill the space. The head is serene, waiting. Suddenly a substance pours over it from all five sides, drenching it in what appears to be a bodily fluid. The spectator wants to turn away but cannot. Horror at the repulsive nature of the substance is replaced by fascination with the beauty of the 'overwhelming natural energies'.
Judith Barry's description of her piece IMAGINATION, Dead Imagine, a 10 foot high, internal projection video cube that symbolizes the struggle and powerlessness of lived experience. And yet, despite the gross victimisation that Barry's video represents, seeing it triggers in us a sense of sublime beauty and fascination. Barry plays on this all too familiar power relationship that occurs daily along the lines of gender, social rank, finance, or the law and in the workplace, on the street or at home. IMAGINATION, Dead Imagine characterizes the environment of abuse and tolerance in which many people, in order to survive, must live.
It shows how poorly our individual bodies and psyches are served through the totalising systems of Modernism, statistics, or commerce. By projecting the image of a human head into an unforgiving form Barry asserts that as individuals we are trapped in a power struggle we cannot win and the spectacle of which overwhelms us to the point of tolerance and submission.
For me this piece also suggests how we live trapped in a box, influenced and restrained by social rules and demands on our beauty and self. This is something we will never escape and will ALWAYS be around, forever dominating our lives and the media.
The box to me symbolises this entrapment and being unable to escape the grasps of this.
In our video the 'character' could be perceived as someone being trapped by their own thoughts and haunted by their own demons, that such an installation could have been perfect to show our piece on/in.
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