Elizabeth Neel, Stand (After Guernica), 2004
Video
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Elizabeth Neel’s ghostly Stand (After Guernica) loops a few seconds of what looks like grainy surveillance video on a small monitor—a clip of a horse attempting to stand up. Due to Neel’s editing, the creature will forever try to do so. Time collapses; the loop feels either very short or very long, and either impression seems appropriate. In effect, Stand (After Guernica) functions like a single image—a wildly beautiful painting—though unlike any by Picasso, making the title feel like an academic afterthought. The most shocking aspect of the work is how fragile this creature looks as it wobbles in its attempt to stand. One feels the weight of technology—in this case the heavy hand of the artist/editor—bearing down on the animal. Its image is trapped, isolated from a natural landscape and context, forced into what we read as a painful, repetitive action that borders on abuse. Stand (After Guernica) suggests that the distance video creates between its subject and audience operates as a form of dominance.