Vanessa Renwick
Hope and Prey | 2006 | 23:00mins | 3 channel video projection and live sound performance | USA
Vanessa Renwick (born 1961 in Chicago, Illinois) is founder and janitor of the Oregon Department of Kick Ass. She is a film / video / installation artist and lives in Portland, Oregon.
Vanessa Renwick is a filmmaker by nature, not by stress of research. Renwick puts scholars to rout by solving through Nature’s teaching problems that have fretted their trained minds. Her iconoclastic work reflects an interest in place, relationships between bodies and landscapes, and all sorts of borders. Working in experimental and poetic documentary forms, she produces films, videos and installations that explore the possibility of hope in contemporary society. Renwick is a naturalist, born, not made: a true barefoot, cinematic rabblerouser, of grand physique, calm pulse and a magnetism that demands the most profound attention.
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Hope and Prey features stunning wildlife cinematography of animals hunting and being hunted. In composing 3 reels to play side-by-side in a panoramic view like that out in nature. It’s a wide landscape where a predator could come at you from anywhere. It is also playing with the fact that predators have eyes on the front of their heads, while prey have eyes on the side of their heads. In this installation the audience definitely has to keep an eye out for danger. The dramatic and sometimes brutal cinematography is transformed and elevated through black and white high-contrast recomposition and a hyper-dynamic score by Portland’s infamous underground composer, Daniel Menche.
Featured in: Animal Mirror
Featured in: SIGNAL Artist Talk: The Land
Featured in: The Possibility of Nature, Hope in Pure Sound, and Faith in Magnetism
