Cyclops

 

Cyclops

How uncanny the appearance, in almost every culture, of the primordial, the mandala; a lens of contemplation that focuses mind and spirit towards an illuminated centre – an aperture to enlightenment.
We gather in the glow of another, more mundane lens: the hypnotic eye of television; a messenger caught in the labyrinths of ideology and economic allegiance while trading in visions of the future in the name of truth. Is truth still naked in a world simultaneously blinded and lit up by the sight of its own horrors? While in many cultures a third eye suggests special insight, the one-eyed creature must admit its divorce from perspective, from reason.
The light and colour of the rose window holds us spell-bound, but it is the dark stone formation of the tracery that gives structure, momentum and rhythm to the spectacle. With my body used as a recording device, I traced the gestures that play out in the news of our time. Replicated into the formulae of gothic stonecarving, the movements have a menacing daisy chain – a tracery for a window that does not necessarily illumi- nate. It devours. For all our labours, are we caught somewhere in the alimentary canal of a monster of our own making?
– Minnette Vári, New York, September 2004

Cyclops
2004
Single-Channel Video Installation
Video: 2′ 23″, Stereo audio: 4′ 59″, looped