(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The New York-based artist, photographer and video creator is known for works that deal with the uncertain boundaries between private versus public, that is, the private versus the public sphere. Silver has been represented on what we can call elitist arenas – including MoMA, Tate, Berlin, London and the Moscow Film Festival. She is also an assistant professor at Columbia University's Visual Arts Department.
Ambitious and arrogant? A crowded, luxurious residence is displayed in individual roofs and juxtaposed video trip icon on black background. First, the cut is small, so big. Video is juxtaposed with text. The video pane changes place in the image, jumps from side to side. Various voice-overs supplement or repeat the text.
The lack of unifying narrative or red thread creates distance. At the same time, the overloaded and ambitious bombardment of text and images requires a great deal of attention.
Silver doesn't care if we hang out or if she takes up too much space. She also does not care whether the cut, the lighting, the choice of the filmed object or the text fragment. In the dissonance between the various elements a tension arises.
Seductive self-environment. In her conviction of the excellence of her own project, she creates a dynamic that opens up for the spectator. As an audience, I give myself involuntarily and impressed. Just imprisoned by the director's own lack of doubt.
Silver works monumentally – not only in terms of ambition, but also in terms of the conceptual weave. The stringency of the countless video triptychs has its own massive and seductive quality. Like three continuous units in time, but with different looks, they both deepen, enrich and elevate each other. With a synergy effect, the assembled video recordings are lifted from being observations and objects to becoming a more striking expression that points to themselves.
Silver clearly has a genius line similar to Knausgård.
The single sections do not have the same vitality. It is in the multifaceted Silver glitter – also textual. She talks about the child's experience of pain, and about the child being taught that a cat also feels pain. She makes the spectator aware of the small nuances through a constantly insistent dissonance between narrative voice and text. Or maybe the nuances are not small at all?
Tragedy versus statistics. Early in the film, she takes action. One child's death is a tragedy, thousands of children's deaths are statistics. Silver asks: "Is there sorrow in knowing one has profited at the expense of someone else?" The answer comes in cash: «No.» Right after comes the obligatory and worn out "I feel gratitude". But with the ensuing sloppy and overly clear "Thanks", the humor becomes clear. It is the one that shows the way to Silver's point of view. She is ironic about her own environmental affiliation in the privileged class, and uses disarming humor and clever juxtaposition to balance her project.
At the same time, Silver manages to thematize aggression, war and exploitation while keeping the visual within a luxurious zone of comfort. A sumptuous wrought iron gate filmed in various sections. A crowded walk-in closet in triptych sockets. Ditto marble sinks with gold taps. Silver uses the house as a metaphor. The house has openings. The house can therefore be penetrated, and thus it is vulnerable. The home – the female security and bastion – is with this grip made as vulnerable as the female body. Silver addresses a burning topic with an unfamiliar and new approach. Where her juxtaposition project first irritated and seemed self-absorbed, I now experience a free-spirited freshness that offers new opportunities. Silver's perspective opens up many layers of reflection, and her inexhaustible security and leeway in this project inspires.
Takes a Knausgård. In the middle of the film, a change takes place. Tired children's shoes and belt chaos have been filmed. Dirty dishes in the close-up. Silver clearly has a stroke of genius similar to Knausgård.
She puts the everyday objects from the intimacy zone together with the big questions, the commitment to society and a trembling conscience.
Forgotten socks. Worn pink plastic sandals. A stained dressing gown strewn down a stately staircase. A forgotten razor by a dirty mirror. A set-up, alienated laundry brush. Things most women stay away from in their works if they want to create a serious social position as up-and-coming and socially critical debaters.
Silver is moving forward. She puts the everyday objects from the intimacy zone together with the big questions, the commitment to society and a trembling conscience. She is like an alchemist who mixes elements to create a new and wiser unit.
The work offers a meditative experience. The start is a bit fluffy, and the shape requires time to get used to. But eventually Silver excels at orchestrating tempo in the various image sections that travel across the screen. She triples her own triptych. Plays on them as on piano keys. Has multifaceted voice-overes who work together and against each other. Free sound use involves rauting, orgasms, moans, crying and punitive whipping. A solid sequence is birds at rest or in flight, accompanied by a chasing helicopter on the sound side.
On the grain. The use of originally composed sound and humor keeps the film from turning into pomp. Thus, in a fragmented but rigorous style, Silver can put war, plunder and poverty in relief to the sumptuous interiors and exteriors. The many sections of automatic watering of the house's garden have speed, power and empathy. In other, smaller observations, there are meeting points between the private and the aggression that are apparently safe out of reach. As in a triptych consisting of a plastic pistol, a well-used target and plastic sandals.
Silver is a confident conductor of its own elements. She knows how to keep her own project in check. What I missed out on humility she makes up for in other grips. Three times, approaching questions, which lead to a bad conscience and a feeling of inadequacy, are cash-swept with "No." Shelly Silver's irony captures on the grain the expected response among those she challenges.
The film will be screened at the Dok Leipzig Film Festival.
