The Ruins (three-channel excerpt)

Claudia Hart The Ruins (three-channel), 2020 Three-channel video animation (color, sound), three screens or projectors, three media players, speakers Dimension variable 10 min, loop Edition of 3, 1 AP Audio by Edmund Campion The Ruins implements still lives, the classical form of a memento mori, to reflect on the canons of a patriarchal western civilization: modernist painting and manifestos of political utopias. Within this three-channel animation, Hart has produced very low polygon models—poor copies or “images,” to borrow a term popularized by Hito Steryl. The models are of copyright-protected paintings by Matisse and Picasso, painters who mark the onset of Modernism. With these models the artist built a game-style labyrinth, covering its walls with animations that also infringe on copyright protections - for it is copyright that also marks the beginning of Modernism, responding to the emerging technology of that era. Central to this work is an audiovisual animation composed by Edmund Campion that tracks through the claustrophobic game worlds created by Hart.