Categories
sculpture sound video installation

Between Two Rivers I, II & III


Between Two Rivers III Steel, handmade paper, two channel video projection, sound 13:56 minutes dimensions variable 2014

This was in the exhibition Unterströmungen (Undercurrents) at Galerie Bagnato in Oberdorf, Konstanz Germany September 2014.  Both channels play the same imagery, but not simultaneously. The primary visual thread through this work is an image of the movement of electrical wires. These are layered with images of water. The sounds are gathered from the streets of New York City, the shores of lake superior, and text from dreams I read where water (in one form or another) is mentioned. There are 60 individual paper and steel “bricks” which are not attached to each other.

Finally, in Felicia Glidden’s videos, the different translation methods of dreams converges and creates a work of art of spoken text, music, cinematic images of dream events, as well as natural and ambient noises. This is combined with some complex room installations. The result is not a replica of the dream, but the dream analogous sphere, as shown in the video “Between Two Rivers III” – the recording of a multimedia installation. Here the media used, which is continually broken up by the architecture itself, accompanies, comments on and contradicts each other. It creates an open connecting room for associations. In One and a half years of work, Felicia Glidden has created a wall for film projections. It consists of hundreds of cubes. Each is made of a metal skeleton which has been coated with hand-made paper. These cubes are now arranged in different formations – atop and next to each other, some of them are open. This wall acts as a breakwater for the film projected on it, which shows water surfaces, because water is in the dream sequence as described by the voice. The video “Between Two Rivers II” becomes the mosaic – ethereal because it denies the clear sense of tracking.

Felicia Glidden operates an artistic research, but it is not a dream interpretation that precisely robs the semi-conscious their essence. In Felicia Glidden’s art the tangible elements made of dreams retain their aura – the schemes of an immeasurable dark zone, with which they are associated.

-Harald Ruppert 2016    Full Text in German

Between Two Rivers III
Sound Script 13:56 Minutes

Low pulse from bells resonating. Recorded  in Weissenau courtyard (runs though entire piece)
Cow bell recorded in the French mountains
Felicia: (voice over) Lying on a piece of paper on top of the water.
Cow bell continues
F: They are digging with a back hoe. There is a bank of water next to the garage.
Street sounds from New York City recorded in Midtown Manhattan
F: I splash my hands into it to get some of it to drain.
Street sounds continues
Birds singing, recorded in Switzerland forest near Schaffhausen
Conversations on the street, brief music, owls and birds call
F: I swim in the slush water.
Wheels from a suitcase on the sidewalk passes by, birds chirping
F: I am wondering how I will get the oil out.
Christmas music, street sounds, whistles, people on the street, bus, birds
F: Why have I returned three times when my first escape was clean away?
Bus driver speaking
F: The view is from above.
Driver assistant “Where you headed?“ F “Greenbelt“ DA: “Oh the bus isn‘t here yet“
F: I see rice patties floating. They are divided into squares.
Still floating, but separated into squares, near the shore.
Bells recorded at Schloss Salem, Bus idling, Bus Driver “This south Baltimore“
Bell strike 12 times
F: Bubbling up rapidly. I ask if we have gotten the drain, apparently, we had partially removed it.
One drain is clear.
F: Another scene I am swimming freely in the water.
Swimming which feels like flying.
Don‘t take up too much space as it’s already tight enough.
I turn the car around, and that’s when I found the abandoned homestead
Crickets recorded in Maryland
Jazz improvisation recorded in San Marco Plaza, Venice
F: I find the room again, but enter from a different door.
F: Soon I am trapped in a corner trying to be small.
Libertango by Astro Piazzolla recorded in San Marco Plaza, Venice
F: A man goes up to the edge of the ice and acts like he’s holding it. Suddenly he‘s in the water, and the water is everywhere.
Libertango continues, crickets, people in the courtyard
Alain Wozniak bartering with a street vendor ”no no no no no one…“
Bells of Salem, fountain, vehicle drives by
F: There is a half door. A black woman walks up to me and starts talking song lyrics to me. I can‘t remember the song but rather the meaning.
I tried to stop her, but she went on to finish the entire lyric.
F: We get to the dock and there is a busy restaurant.
Accapella blues singing recorded in the New York City Subway 14th street station “Just don‘t let it change your mind“
F: I am impatient as I try to fix the boat motor.
Singing continues, “he didn’t have no shoes, for a long time…just me and you, just a long time, don‘t you know no other man, don‘t you let it don‘t let it change your mind, aha, yeah ha whoa yeaha,“
baby cries
Low pulse from bells resonating.

Felicia Glidden 30.08.2014


Ravelation is an original work inspired by Ravel, composed and performed by Alain Wozniak in the Galerie Bagnato for Kunstnacht Konstanz in September 2014 at the solo exhibition Unterströmungen by Felicia Glidden.

Review (German online link)   PDF : Galerie Bagnato zeigt Träume
Catalog (German PDF) FELICIA_KATALOG
Catalog Essay (English PDF) by Dr. Johann-Peter Regelmann
Between Two Rivers II

The second exhibition of Between Two Rivers was at Montgomery College in Maryland for an artist in residency in 2012, curated by Judy Stone. Students were invited to participate by adding their dreams Using japanese paper, glue and markers, and then rebuild the structure in one area of the sculpture.  I also recorded some of them telling their dreams and each day of the residency, I would add their voices to an mp3 player attached to headphones. In the three week residency I saw 16 classes of art students. The installation had three separate video projections with one stereo sound 29:00 Minutes. There are 600 individual “bricks” in the exhibition. The two visual threads in the videos are clouds and roads.

Between Two Rivers I
F Glidden sculpture
Felicia Glidden steel, handmade paper, single channel video projection, stereo sound, 34 min, looped, dimensions variable 2012

Solo exhibition at Hillyer Art Space in Washington DC. The visual thread through this work is an video taken from an airplane above the clouds over Switzerland. The dreams included in the sound score are all recorded in my 2012 journal. The shadow drawings on the wall were an integral part of the installation. On the floor lies a 2 meter (6 ft) square handmade sheet of paper on which sits a chaotically stacked pile of “bricks” (paper and steel) There are 350 individual “bricks” (19 x 8 x 9 cm) (7.5 x 3.35 x 3.5 in.)  in the exhibition.

Felicia Glidden steel, handmade paper, three channel video projection, stereo sound, 29 min, looped, dimensions variable 2012
Felicia Glidden steel, handmade paper, single channel video projection, stereo sound, 34 min, looped, dimensions variable 2012
Felicia Glidden steel, handmade paper, three channel video projection, stereo sound, 29 min, looped, dimensions variable 2012
Felicia Glidden steel, handmade paper, single channel video projection, stereo sound, 34 min, looped, dimensions variable 2012

This video clip includes sound from the Friedrichshafen Youth Wind Orchestra tuning, as well as an original composition on piano by Christian Von Der Goltz, 2010.