Maria Dumlao - Work

	*Recent Videos* 2010-ongoing Untitled (Rocky) [2010, video and sound, 16 minutes] is a reimagining of Sylvester Stallone’s iconic boxing film in which characters and dialogue are redacted, thereby altering the focus from the film’s familiar inspirational narrative to a recontextualized view of the Philadelphia locations and cityscapes in which the film is set. The videos for New Pharmacist Boogie and Long Warm Afternoon are made in collaboration with composer/musician Chris Forsyth.
	*Billboard Art Project* 2010-ongoing Two series of images, *Only Passing Through* and *Upon a Fluent Route* were included in a 24-hours of uninterrupted, noncommercial series of images contributed by artists were displayed on both sides of the LED billboard on Interstate 195 in Richmond, VA. The billboard was also viewed from the Westwood Trail. Maria is currently working on another series for the Billboard Art Project.
	*Radio Dial* 2009 On the roads and highways we enter and leave spaces that have visible and invisible connections. Antennas, cables and wireless interconnections parallel and intersect our paths most often without our awareness. We sometimes borrow and take information as quickly as we let go of them as we cross these transmissions. The radio dial is one way that we can connect with information through simple electric and magnetic fields transmitted in space at the speed of light. Changing in density from place to place, radio transmitters launch the radio waves into space. In a receiver, the idea is to pick up as much of the transmitter's power as possible and supply it to the tuner. This is unlike the digital radio that is slowly taking over the way we traditionally transmit and receive, where the digital channels are precisely tuning in to the exact point where the station is transmitting, thereby not allowing one to manually tune-in in between stations. For over six months in 2009, I was commuting between Brooklyn and Newtown, PA to teach, and found myself in the car for about 12 hours per week, often listening to the radio. I rigged a small dynamic microphone to a dial radio, recording as the tuner enters and leaves radio frequencies one, two or three channels at time. Searching for spaces in between and in and out of range of frequencies, the radio dial functioned to define the distance and space that I travel, aurally mapping my journey.
	*Brainstormers* 2005-ongoing, public performance, exhibition, publication, internet, and video *Brainstormers* is an activist performance collective that is committed to bringing gender politics into the public dialogue and challenging the current power structure to change its ways. Brainstormers is a collaboration with Maria, Elaine Kaufmann and Danielle Mysliwiec.
	*Samples* 2008 Sampled from various contemporary video games, *Samples* is a color study of blood as a representation of success in these games.
	*Is that all?* 2008, Slide Installation with two projectectors and 160 35-mm slides *Is that all?* is an installation of two alternating slide projections. The slides are projected adjacent to or facing each other, either on two different walls or on two projection screens. The gathered images are edited and made into slides for each of the two slide carousels. Each slide image is culled from a different source, but all feature subtitles. The presence of the subtitles creates a previously absent dialogue between the two images. The two projections suggest a new spatial relationship built on the tension of this dialogue, with the viewer caught in the crossfire between the two projections.
	*Interrogation Mark* 2006-2008, Digital collage, variable dimensions *Interrogation Mark* involves gathering both violent images from the current war in Iraq and pastoral images from various lifestyle magazines and books. In the tradition of collage, the images are digitally combined in a way that suggest that dread, violence, and general pathos underpin popular images promoted in our culture.
	Dailies 2003-2008, sound, variable duration *Dailies* is a project in which I create a daily news ballad using source material from the media by singing newspaper articles over sounds culled from that morning’s television and radio news broadcasts. The news itself is transformed into a lullaby of sorts, while ordinary sounds of real radio broadcasts are electronically manipulated and abstracted. Each day, a new world of source material is made available by the global news media and transformed in to a new Daily by me. The result is a combination of tape collage with news radio. Dailies imagines a world in which Pierre Schaeffer and Jim Lehrer could be the new Burt Bacharach and Hal David and I’m their Dionne Warwick.
	*The Go Show* 2005, performance, video, and television, approx. 120 minutes *The Go Show* brings together a variety show’s ever-changing cast of characters and situations with a subversive re-envisioning of mainstream American culture. Its absurd and subtle humor imagines entertainment as a realm of open-ended possibility where French feminist philosophy is as much an influence as Monty Python. The four episodes of The Go Show each take on an different theme: religion, madness, art, and patriotism. Preview EXCERPTS from each episode: Episode 1: Goin' Churchin' Episode 2: Gone Nuts Episode 3: Pop Goes the Artist Episode 4: There's a Riot Goin' On The Go Show is the result of a collaboration between Maria Dumlao, Jane Johnston, and Elaine Kaufmann. The three wrote and performed in each episode.
	Verging 2004-2005, projected slide installation with 80 35mm slides on a carousel approx. 12 minutes (9 seconds per slide) *Verging* deals with the peculiarly photographic tension of the still image. I am the editor of a group of quiet, decisive moments that are appropriated from films. The perspective of the camera in every image is similar (from behind a lone woman pausing within an architectural space or landscape), and throughout it serves to amplify a tense moment preceding an unknown decision or act. Ultimately Verging deals with anticipation, expectation, and anxiety. The series is now made up of more than 200 35mm-slides. Each image is to be projected consecutively one after another on a timer. 80 images per carousel can be exhibited in each slide projector.
	*Loom* 2004, video installation,40 minutes *Loom* is a silent video that is made up from found images, mostly from classic American horror and suspense films. The static images of empty spaces or architecture appear frozen or still, as if they are photographs. The still-like image is then subtly interrupted by shadow play of some forms of human presence. Each segment is dramatically slowed down, so that time will enter as an important participant in the viewing experience. The composed and subtle movement into and out of the single fixed frame creates an interruption to the still life or empty space.
	Home Cut 2003, color video with sound, 2 minutes and 30 seconds, loop for continuous installation or for screening Home Cut is a juxtaposition of image and sound from various domestic activities. Image and sound are cut to serve the purpose of sampling to create different sound instruments. Based on seventeen samples, the images are arranged to create a pattern. By changing the arrangement of the pattern and including repetition, there is an attempt to reconstruct the rhythm of the series. It is through the variation and rearranging that the pattern eventually struggles to find its original pattern. In attempting to get back to the original pattern, the samples are arranged over and over again, only to arrive at an even more chaotic state. In consequence, the composition creates a domino effect, where one pattern after another is recreated based on the last pattern. As a result, the only way to ever get back to the original pattern is to literally play the sequence as a reverse. Much of this work is a result of my interest in the relationship of sound and image. Home Cut is a conscious effort to reconstruct the process of a sound producer, as opposed to my usual process as an image producer. Much consideration is thought of in terms of rhythm and composition, as well as the expectation one inherits after hearing and learning rhythm.
	*Katok* 2003, color video with sound,20 seconds loop continuous installation using a television monitor I use the camera as the instrument, which produces the sound and creates the image. The texture of the tree combined with my gesture grounds the rhythm and the spatial composition. Made up of small percussive movements, I intend the repetition and its continuity to become meditative in much the same way it becomes a drone after a while. The rhythm we find in our everyday lives (as in the drone of ventilators and lights or hum from distant traffic) is all created by a number of small distinguished sounds that make up a big sound. This piece may very well function as a drone amongst other sounds.
	Caesura 2003, video with sound, 20 minutes loop for continuous projection The ruptures become distortions and amplifications of normal patterns of seeing and listening, in much the same way that stutters can be natural distortions of the normal speech. Sound and image of the interruptions are made by the contact to the microphone and the lens and are abstracted by the patterns of branches created depending on how I swing, twist and move the camera around. I use the camera lens and microphone not as a representation of anything heard or seen, but as a point of contact of my performative confrontation.
	((wave 2002, color video with sound, 20 minutes loop for continuous projection Mostly recorded from the source of the image, the sound in this piece is often the sound of air as it is violently disturbed either by nature or by jet and airplanes slicing through the firmament, which share a similar sound frequency as the waves. There is uncertainty when sound is “real” sound or if it is added and mixed: as in the fading in and fading out of each sound, the blending of sounds, the sudden volume cuts, the loops, and the silence. There is not much manipulation in the image of *((wave* other than setting the camera upside down and the occasional delay and the desaturation of color. By the simple act of turning the camera, there is a further sense of disorientation and dislocation with the image, similar to the effects of the manipulation of sound.
	*Eleventh Floor* 2002, video with sound, 9 minutes *Eleventh Floor* is a series of travelogue of sorts; a navigation of the non-stop function of light fixtures and ventilators in hallways and corridors of an institutional building.
	top of page \| news \| resume \| bio \| contact \| links \| ©2007-2012 Maria Dumlao