Exhibition Sittings: Ignas Krunglevicius

Ignas Krunglevicius at Art Gallery of South Australia
Interrogation
2009
Two Channel Video Installation
13 mins

Photo taken at the exhibition

Photo sourced from Ignas Krunglevicius

Clip from Sydney Biennale

I have viewed this work at the Art Gallery of South Australia three times since it has been on view; there is something that I find very compelling about it. The work is based on a transcript from an interrogation with a woman who allegedly killed her husband with his own gun. The video work condenses all of the information into plain white text on a black background that systematically changes to red or blue, giving the viewer a sense of the woman's mood. The two sides of the conversation are depicted on corresponding walls, the interrogators to the left and the woman's to the right. The minimalist nature of the work is accompanied by a very simple electronic soundtrack; all of these elements work quietly to built a feeling of tension and apprehension about the unknown. The viewer finds themselves trespassing on a conversation of which the complex psychological exchanges demands that every single word spoken counts, every hesitation and second of silence are crucial to the conversation. The piece, however, ends without a resolution and challenged me to ponder on what the artist was trying to achieve; he was not concerned with the specifics of this particular murder case but rather with the idea of power and the psychology behind it. The work explores the way that language can be used and abused to to coerce and manipulate.

The work is open to interpretation, based on the way that it ends, in particular. The artist's intention is unclear, he is simply presenting the viewer with a tense scene reduced to its very basic core. I found myself thinking about it so much that I had to return again to experience it for a second time. This time I was more aware of the way that the music was synchronised with each word and that the font size of the woman's text was slightly larger than that of the man. The work raised my sense of awareness, it forced a feeling of suspicion over me and made me feel tense. The work demonstrated to me how simple elements could be combined to have an effect on the viewer in quite a strong way. It showed how intrigue could demand the viewer to stay and really experience the work for its full duration. It also demonstrated that an effective work does not need to be fully resolved.

The video installation was very effective within the space. I liked the way that the two sides of the conversation were shown on a split screen to walls meeting at the right angle to one another. It demonstrated a divide between the woman and the interrogator. The seats for the viewers created a square with the two walls involved. The way that I was sitting, against the wall, really did make me feel like a fly on the wall to a conversation I shouldn't be listening to.

The one thing that I did notice was that there was a spelling mistake on one of the screen texts. The 'where' should have been a 'were'. This did work to break my concentration a little. I was unsure if this was intentional or not, if the word 'where' had been written on the original transcript or if it was a mistake by the artist. I am unsure, however, if I would change it. I liked the way that it distracted me from the conversation for a brief moment, in the same way that could actually happen in a real life conversation. I also felt as though the spelling error reminded me that I was, in fact, simply a viewer and ultimately disconnected from the conversation, viewing its transcript rather than the actual interrogation. 


I also found this piece of writing by Theodor Barth about the work that I found quite interesting:

INTERROGATION

1. The video interrogation of artist Ignas Krunglevicius could be precisely described as a forgetting device: forgetful of the recording and forgetful of a found document (a real murder interrogation in text).
2. It would therefore be wrong to understand interrogation as a quoting-device. The device is the interrogation. It comes in a split screen, as though the viewer’s cerebral hemispheres are being addressed separately. This is the container.
3. At the level of contents, there is this really weird conversation – called interrogation – that doesn’t really take place, but is installed inside the viewer’s brain. There is no slippage. The surface is completely clean.
4. The structure of the container/content device is simple: the text featuring the interrogator’s meandering questions are to the left on the rectangular screen, while the curt answers of the perpetrator are to the right (always in larger Helvetica type).
5. But this is a lure. The exchange featuring in the inter-changing sequence of white type is as much about the darkness behind. The stretched rectangular screen could be a burst generator covering the eyes of a suspect, or a prisoner.
6. During the interrogation, the suspect makes herself known (Mary Kovic). The interrogator is Robert John. The interrogation is not conducted in quest of names, but rather homes in on a mental disturbance of sorts, or a psychological condition.
7. It is at this exact point at which the interrogation starts working as a device, and eschews the video recording: the music played to intensify the exchange is accurately synchronised. Delays in the suspect’s answers feature in occasional red, white and blue impulses (a tricolour).
8. The synchronicity of text and music is the disturbance. In a normal person words are neurologically slower than sense intelligence. Their function – it has been argued – is to censor impulses (Libet). Not so here.
9. In the scholarly text that Ignas Krunglevicius has joined to the device, the diagnostic that corresponds to above condition has been censured. Or, alternatively, left vacant (as yet another symptom belonging to the same syndrome).
10. But this is a lure: or a placeholder, in the language of computing. Whoever occupies the place – for no other reason that it is vacant – becomes at once available to an endless and extremely destructive manipulative series.

http://krunglevicius.com/2/interrogation/