Woody Vasulka

Reminiscence, 1974

The real-life material that Woody records with a Portapak camera during his visit to a farmhouse in Moravia (where he spent some time in childhood) is later processed in such a way as to de-familiarize the encounter with his past. However, the deflection does not change the scale of the image, so that the frame-bound imagery and the visuality of the topographic environment sustain a permeable relation to reality. This approach demonstrates an overriding concept in the work of the Vasulkas, where the focus is not so much on the linear passage of but on interference and transformation. The results of such operations are to build up tension: they are incoherent, and paradoxical.