Wood & Harrison: The Only Other Point (2005)

The characteristic features of Wood and Harrison’s earlier works were their use of a fixed camera, the artists’ own presence in the work, and a lucid, minimalist aesthetics of the sets, all marking their connection to the early video works of Burden, Acconci and Abramović. In this new work, however, their practice has moved in a more explicitly filmic direction. In its narrative and filmic structure, The Only Other Point marks a significant departure from the artists’ recent multiple channel monitor works. A camera tracks in an apparent single take across a constructed set. The events which unfold within the set could be read as a discourse on the possible configurations of balls falling, rising, bouncing, coming to rest or descending into chaos within a space. This project has something of the quality of a Renaissance treatise: the balls’ movement maps the configuration of the architectural spaces in which these events are played out. The rougher fabrication of the set and the work’s pace and tone, however, also mark a transition from the formal to the real. Ultimately, the work is a testament to the artists’ endless inventiveness: a treatise on the richness of artistic imagination.