With Country Incarnate Anna Henson takes you on a journey through land and sea and demonstrates how the steps of life and death blend and merge into one another through the kaleidoscopic effect of her projections.
Picture two screens upon which symmetrical scenes are projected; it is as if two mirrors have been placed at right angles and the two sets of images reflect identically. Henson’s installation has multiple effects upon the viewer’s eye. The folding images trick the eye into merging the two screens into one so that two adjacent trees morph into an Elk-like figure with a gaping mouth. Hands and feet multiple and spread across the screens like butterfly wings as if sprouting from the middle of one large screen instead of two.
What is striking about the installation is that there is constant movement. Like the beads and glass particles of a kaleidoscope the images of Country Incarnate twist and turn, a body, hands, feet, hair are constant in their tapping, swishing, swaying. An ocean and gold sand merges into a blue rippling quilt and swaying blonde hair. Even within the journey of trains, water and sand the pauses are moving.
Anna Henson is a graduate of Glasgow School of Art and an interdisciplinary artist that works with video, live production and theatre design. As part of the Surge Festival Anna presents her latest video installation Country Incarnate.
I caught up with Anna at the Arches for a dialogue on her creation…
Ceri: Watching Country Incarnate was like being taken on a journey…
Anna: Yes absolutely, it is about a journey. It is split into two concepts, what happens to the mind and the reality of the body. The video flits between two worlds, the outside world which are the physical locations such as the train and beach and the inward world represented by the woman in her bedroom.
Ceri: How did Country Incarnate come about?
Anna: It came out of two very different periods of travelling: one a short term trip, and the other the four years I have spent living abroad. In this video, I was meditating on trying to identify where I was, both in terms of physical location and in terms of being an American and in a culture that is not yours. The film was shot while traveling in Spain and Italy, and also in my bedroom in Glasgow.
Ceri: How do you think your work will translate to your audience members?
Anna: I think it is relevant to anyone that has travelled; anyone that has taken a journey, and anyone that has tried to read maps. While it came from my personal experience of Scotland and other European locations, I think that the installation translates into a universal message for those who have found themselves in a foreign place, unfamiliar surroundings. This video explores the geographical country, the physical body, the mental space of the individual, and the ways in which these three things oppose and assimilate one another.
Ceri: Do you find that questions of identity tend to arise once you have left home?
Anna: That’s true! Now that I’ve been away from home for four years I’ve learnt that my roots do affect the way I am. My sense of identity as related to my ‘American-ness’ has become more obvious to me than it was when I was living in America, but I have also found that this sense of identity can be translated to fit in with another culture.
Ceri: Do you foresee yourself expanding this work?
Anna: Yes, I have tons more footage to play with. I love multi-screen installations; I envisage creating a whole room, essentially a 360 degree video. You can call it a total immersive video!
As I watched Henson’s work, I found myself reflecting how life is a series of movements which blend into one another. I found myself drawing comparisons with Cunningham’s novel The Hours, and how both of these works cause you to zoom in on details with microscopic intensity. The title I found curious. I turned to my colleague Rob Mullen and asked him, ‘Why Country Incarnate?’ And he astutely replied, ‘We are born out of the earth, die and return to it’.
By Ceri Restrick, an Arches review for Surge Blog 20th July 2010
