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Shelly Silver

2001 00:03:15 United StatesEnglishColorStereo4:3DV video

Description

"The world will devour you...."

A group of cops laugh and talk, while scanning the street for suspicious activity. An extreme close-up of a sensuously exposed neck; a soft pink fleshy ear turns to reveal an inquisitive hostile eye....

1 is a short tape about longing, threat, power and seduction, with the camera functioning in turn, as aggressor, mediator and confessor. The split-screen image as well as the eerie sound track, made up of two versions of the same Miles Davis song run simultaneously, underline Silver's ambivalent take on the controversial subject matter, as well as calling the work's title into question.

Quoting from the established genres of experimental, documentary, and fiction film and television, Shelly Silver’s work is funny, poetic and formally beautiful, seducing the viewer into pondering such difficult issues as the cracks in our most common assumptions, the impossibility of a shared language, and the ambivalent and yet overwhelming need to belong—to a family, a nation, a gender, an ideology. Exploring the psychology of public and private space, the ambivalence inherent in familial and societal relations and the seduction and repulsion of voyeurism, Silver’s work elicits equal amounts of pleasure and discomfort.