Magali Duzant
Magali Duzant
artist statement
In creating photo and video installations I explore issues of memory, desire, and time. In utilizing a combination of new and old imagery as well as technology I re-contextualize the past in terms of the present. The layering and combination of said images bridge distance and time to discover how we orient ourselves in the wider world. The installation piece A Clearing In The Woods; 1969/2012 utilizes both physical and ephemeral materials to explore the notion of non-linear time. A found slide is projected onto a screen in a photograph of a forest clearing. My work depicts light and landscape as a means to understand our relation to surroundings. The present is not free of the past and the past is tempered by our experiences in the present. By collapsing a scene in on itself through layered imagery – the doubling of forests not quite the same, the presence of a screen in conjunction with the hum of a projector, older forms of imaging technology come together to create a contemporary view. The philosopher Gilles Deleuze has said that “...the screen is where direct confrontations take place between the past and the future.” We cannot experience a physical space without the reflection of what we have seen, known, and felt. The installation becomes both the image and the phenomenon of creating the image – the dust in the projected stream of light, the whirr of the machine's fan, the glare of it's bulb. The “truth” of a space is examined through the refraction of memory; as the slide begins to decay the image changes, becoming a ghost of what it once was.
what do you love about the MFA program at Parsons The New School for Design?
The MFA program at Parsons The New School for Design allows students to approach photography from multiple angles. In this regard the studio mimics a creative office and think tank where photographs become installations, series, videos, and beyond. The most exciting part of the process is discussion and the ability to see fifteen people working through their ideas beyond traditional means.
anticipated graduation date: August 2014
