Momentum, 2011
2-channel video installation, color, sound, looped
Duration: 6:56 min.
"In Momentum, the camera not only functions as the missing studio mirror for the dancers but also visualizes the memory of the artist behind the camera. Indeed, it documents the artist's perspective in the process of art making, objectively capturing the dancers' waiting and preparation as Simpson corrects the lighting and sets the color balance. Similarly, it reflexively incorporates its own editing, using abrupt cuts and loops to craft a sense of time that makes visible the respective blind spots and circularity of the artist's memory. While Simpson does not physically appear before the camera, the group of nearly two dozen dancers function as a refracted image of her performing self."
"In Momentum, Simpson transforms the memory of a bygone moment into a legible form. Transcribing a historical moment into a communicable experience, she constructs a score- one dancer spins until exhaustion and walks off; a second takes her position and repeats- which renders a fleeting form available for viewing after its iteration."
-Thomas J. Lax
