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[February 14th 2002]
kopenhagen's Julie Damgaard Nielsen and Peter
Land outside the X-room.
The Ride
By Kristine Ploug and Julie Damgaard Nielsen
Peter Land: The Ride
The X-room, National Gallery
16. Feb. - 5. May. 2002
The Ride is a simple story about a man who rides his bicycle
down a woodland path and falls over. And falls. And falls. The film
lasts three minutes and in this amount of time he manages to fall
off his bike a numerous amount of times. Furthermore the film is
looped [the two ends of the film reel are attached, ed.], so the
poor man just goes on falling and falling.
 
The film is accompanied by a piece of music, which the artist has
composed himself, that mostly reminds one of music coming from the
loudspeakers of an old merry-go-round. The association to a merry-go-round
is enforced by the experience of the man, as it were, 'going round
and round in circles' and the title of the work, The Ride,
which apart from referring to the actual bike ride also signifies
a ride on a an amusement at a play ground fair.
The Ride is projected using 16 mm film and has a very Laurel
and Hardy feel to it, due partly to the slapstick comedy attached
to the content of the film but also because of the genre of music
and the old-fashioned 'gritty' appearance of the film.
Peter Land has quite consciously sought out this specific quality.
- "The film was shot using Super 8 film and then transferred
to video, so I could edit it. I wanted the woollen edgy effect of
the Super 8 film. The only reason for putting the whole thing on
to 16 mm afterwards is that this is the most robust film type available;
Super 8 would probably not be able to cope with being shown in a
loop all day long!"
With The Ride the actual method of projection has become
an integrated part of the work, far more so than Peter Land's previous
work, which almost entirely has been shown in the form of video.
Infinitely Unnecessary
Throughout the making and set-up of The Ride there are an
obviously excessive amount of non-necessities at play. Things are
far more awkward and complicated than they need to be. For Peter
Land this 'unnecessary' element makes up the whole essence of the
project.
- "You can compare it to a drunk man who comes home and discovers
that he has forgotten his front door key; so he crawls up to the
fifth floor, smashes his balcony door, only to discover that he
didn't forget his key after all!"
Emptiness and empty space
Repetition is absolutely central for The Ride. The fact of
the man's fall being repeated again and again gives a feeling of
infinite emptiness, which reflects the emptiness of the room surrounding
the actual installation of the work. The film projector and the
screen are placed in a corner of the large X-room and therefore
only takes up a small part of the available exhibition area. This
surrounding empty space becomes part of The Ride, leaving
audiences with a sense of being slightly lost in it all....
Interview
with Peter Land about The Ride...
Translated and edited by Sophie Pucill
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