'Near Real Time' (2014) Three channel video installation, 4K Digital Video, Standard Definition Analogue Video and Archive Footage; Colour and Black & White; Sync Sound. Dimensions variable; Duration: Infinite loop.

In 'Near Real Time' a three-channel video installation, Gail Pickering draws from her research into a pioneering social experiment in community television which took place in France in the 1970s. Participants of the project disputed the image they had once collectively made culminating in a climate of widespread distrust about its political objectives.

The last remaining recordings of their live broadcasts provide a space for Pickering to address the subjectivity of the televisual image itself, fictionalising the literal cuts of the historical material. Using montage to mimic the episodic and fragmentary character of both television and the video tape recordings as well as incorporating historical as well as new material.

All the on-screen characters instinctively mouth a shared monologue, a collective voice that shifts between being a story-teller, a conversationalist and an interrogator, each addressing the choreography of images that we see. The artist uses dubbing and lip-synching to produce a narrative that explores the physicality of the projected image and the space in which the community found itself.

The installation consists of three projection screens presented in a zigzag formation. Seen from both sides, the projected images overlay and fragment as the viewer moves between and around them, their own shadows occasionally becoming part of the image.

The work was commissioned by FLAMIN Productions through Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network with funding from Arts Council England, the Elephant Trust and Goldsmiths University of London.

The three-channel video installation ‘Near Real Time’ was the primary work in the major solo exhibition ‘Mirror Speech’ at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Level 2 Gallery between 31-October 2014 and 11-January 2015.

A single-screen version was premiered in the 58th BFI London Film Festival and in the Jarman Award 2015 touring programme and is included in the LUX Collection.

http://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/24351