Self-Portrait at the Door (Blue Screen Sequence), Mini DV, duration: 6 min., 2005
In this durational performance for the camera, the artist attempts to recite an unknown text, replacing every scripted word with the sound ‘ah’. Standing against a blue screen the artist appropriates the technique of chroma key compositing to language, with the expectation that meaning could be composited into the artists’ abstract shrieks post performance.
Artist Statement
Andrew Newman is an artist based in Sydney working primarily in mediated performance, using video, sound, photography and the web. Alongside his artistic training at the Sydney College of the Arts, Newman has studied experimental media at the Berlin University of the Arts, and communication at the University of Hamburg and the University of Technology Sydney. Newman’s artistic practice is hence heavily rooted in communication and media theory.
Newman uses his performative projects to unravel what he considers the conflict between two desires for the other. Pothos, a desire for the absent being that is constructed through language, and Himeros, the more burning desire for the present being that exists through action. In his work Newman reveals the absurd alienation of the individual, forever disconnected by these desires.