Hoist

“Hoist” is an expanded cinema installation and part of Liz Roberts’ “Transportation” body of moving image work. Movies are a form of transportation, and within them, modes of transport such as cars and elevators are often used to move narrative forward. Cinema requires a willing suspension of disbelief; so does stepping into a box suspended from a cable that will hoist you into the air.

In this installation, the viewer stands between two large screens in a simulated freight elevator. The viewer controls which “floor” to be transported to by pressing an (in-real-life defunct) elevator button panel. The video elevator runs up and down; at each stop, the freight doors open and a different destination is revealed in the form of a video vignette made by one of the students in the seminar class “Mastering Mise-en-scène.” Expectations of narrative order are upended as the viewer moves between different vignettes, the doors opening to incongruous places and spaces.

Visiting artist Liz Roberts collaborates with Professor Marc Wiskemann’s “Mastering Mise-en-scène” seminar students, placing the moving image in physical space through expanded cinema installation. Less simulacra, more mise-en-abyme (“placed into abyss”), Hoist is both a dream within a dream - as mise-en-abyme is used in film - and a frame story, leading the viewer from one story to the many stories contained and framed within.

Flickr images of opening night
Photo Credit: Ali Rose and Gina Ezzone, Denison Dept. of Cinema