Sweden, 1989
www.nicolagodman.com
Thesis: Smithson / Dialectics
JARDIN I. My Garden, book II. Nature Morte à l'Arbre Tombé, video 2h III. Narcissus/ Little Bulb/ On-i-on, live performance IV. Slice, wood V. T-cut, video 31 min VI. Jasmijn - Growing Up in a Changing World, installation outside
A video of a tree being cut down is placed in front of an upstairs window that overlooks the spot where the tree once stood. The cut wood stands inside the exhibition, bearing the marks of the chainsaw motion as scars of a delayed demise. Historical time and present time seem superimposed in a documentary move that fixates the very act of disappearing, the motions involved in the process of leaving no traces. In a sense each act of construction necessitates an equal act of destruction, and the paired opposites often prove of comparable strength. But there is something within the ephemeral nature of the documentary Nicola Godman presents that should be deeply troubling us. Godman's gaze is not to the major event, that kind of event we can easily recognize, oppose, correct, address, or protest against, but to the minor one, an event that seems so small and insignificant it could easily be overlooked. By accumulation and repetition, Godman seems to say, it is this minor event that becomes the tragedy that shapes our lives. A tree here, a plant there, as T. S. Eliot said, not with a bang, but with a whimper.
- Tudor Bratu
