~THE PROJECTION ROOM~
Laurel Beckman:
Your Special Island
15/02/17 - 15/03/17

watch now: http://www.theunstitute.org/Projection.Room.Video.html

This month our online cinema The Projection Room sees the premiere of the challenging new work by US artist Laurel Beckman. In Your Special Island, brain-state activity from MRI imaging becomes conflated with the personal affects of sensory phenomena - memory, desire and shame. Queering this transient experience into the 'island' of the video-screen, Beckman lucidly explores the neurological quest to locate the empathy centres in the brain whilst effectively employing the pervasive inadequacy of perception to convey the experience of affect to the viewer through this screen or 'island'.
"Attending to themes at the crossroads of consciousness + social conditions, meta-physics + science, my work investigates perceptual phenomena, stage and screen space, and affect. Through the use of unconventional structure, absurdity and humor, the projects are playfully layered, giving equal weight to conceptual and visual richness."

Laurel Beckman's video works have been screened in festivals, museums, and public spaces throughout the United States, and abroad in roughly 30 countries including Canada, Peru, Palestine, Australia, India, China, Switzerland, Italy, Iran, Netherlands, Brazil, the UK and France. She is restless and curious and a professor of art at the University of California Santa Barbara.