Another Day
(Simultaneous record of the sun rising and setting
in two opposite locations on the globe- South East
Australia and West Azores)
Two 19 minute DVD projections
In Another Day we see a film of the sun setting and a film of the sun rising projected simultaneously on either side of a single screen. The screen plays the role of the entire world, since the films were shot at the exact same time at locations diametrically opposite one another. By circling the piece we are able to switch from sunrise to sunset at will, as if we had the ability to skip from one end of the world to another in a few paces. Although our instincts tell us that going back and forth between sunrise and sunset represents a protraction of time, logic insists that Another Day represents a protraction of space. Somehow, no matter how elementary, the fact that someone else’s day is just beginning as ours is ending remains profoundly disorientating. The effect of seeing the two together in Another Day makes for a mesmerising, elegiac experience. Despite the cliched status of sunsets and sunrises, seeing a day begin and end remains awe-inspiring. Perhaps unconsciously we sense that we are witnessing the birth and death of our world on each occasion. This could explain the melancholy that underlies Another Day. After all, in the piece, day never truly emerges from night. In Another Day our planet stays stuck in a truncated cycle of birth and death as if the victim of a cruel cosmological malfunction. The romance of the piece results in part from the artist’s decision to shoot from land to sea, conforming to the format of many thousands of paintings and postcards. This objective led the artist and her assistant to the Azores islands in the mid Atlantic, while her other crew journeyed to Wilson’s Promontory in Victoria, the site of the most southerly lighthouse in Australia, the two teams linked by satellite phone. Text: Alex Farquharson
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