Exercises on the North Side, 2007
Digital Betacam (special edition). Installation. Courtesy: The artist & Consonni.
First seen at Documenta in 2007, Exercises on the North Side eschews the classic, heroic ‘master narratives’ of the traditional mountain film (with its onus on personal achievement and territorial conquest) in favour of the collective nature of the activity surrounding both the climb and its filmic representation.
Full of competing perspectives and parallel points of view, the footage reflects a sense of provisionality accentuated by the artist’s decision to place both the means of production (and the creative choices that follow) into the hands of the climbers themselves, in pursuit of a kind of visual innocence whose elusive, illusory quality approximates to the experience of the discovery of new uncharted terrain.
