Man in the Snow

Lutz & Guggisberg

3 January 2006

Video projection. 5’ 5”

Man in the Snow is composed of grainy black-and-white footage of a man in full mountain gear making his way up the face of a mountain. His struggle with the nature of the ascent, and with the deteriorating elements, is echoed in the mode of presentation, in which the already foggy and ambiguous image (which has the dream-like and faded quality of archive footage) is whited-out further by its projection on a white wall in a room 
with natural light. The video is accompanied by over two hundred misshapen, burnt wooden birds. Their huddled, serial quality is strangely  reminiscent of the exhausted look of penitents or pilgrims, at the end of their journey