Whitney Biennial:Kerry Tribe

One of the few works I viewed at the Whitney Biennial that possessed features that I feel are relevant towards quality art was the work titled H.M, by Kerry Tribe. This work contained a double projection of a single 16mm film which runs 18:30 minutes.
The work H.M revolves around the story of a memory- impaired man who at the age of 27 underwent surgery to lessen his epilepsy; however the surgery resulted in radical and persistent amnesia. He no longer could make lasting memories and had a memory lasting only 20 seconds. Tribe uses two projectors to play a loop of video which displays the same video but spaced 20 seconds apart. This simple separation of video and time is one of the most intriguing and successful parts of her work.
Tribe employs the idea of lapsed memory pertaining to that of “Patient H.M,” by displaying these same videos at a twenty second difference. This creates a very interesting visual aspect to the work due to its narrative, that of an amnesia patient. By having this lapse it allows the viewer to enter the world of “Patient H.M,” creating a type of visual chaos that causes your eyes to wander between the videos taking in the information that both are displaying. Another successful aspect of Tribe’s work is the use of video to only create her work, as a material and as a way or projection, but also to act as a type of symbolism to our memory, since we often relate photography and film to that of recorded history)
Overall, the combination of material, visual and auditory elements used by Kerry Tribe made her work one of the most successful pieces at the Whitney Biennial. Tribe used all aspects of what many sculpture artists should pay attention to, not only a focus on the construction, presentation and the meaning behind the work but also taking these individual elements and making sure they all relate to each other, thus making the piece complete.