Landscape and Collaboration 1980 -1988
Tapes are available for rental or acquisition at Electronic Arts Intermix
Installations are available through the artist at byrnefilms@gmail.com​
In the early 1980s, my work shifted to integrating my interest in landscapes and choreographic collaborations. This was manifest in both single-channel tapes and installations. I worked alongside some of the era's most influential choreographers, such as Eiko & Koma and Trisha Brown, to produce original dance pieces for video.
My approach to image-making in both landscape and video dance was a physical and emotional reaction to the environments and performers at that moment. The resulting images were sensual and straightforward, with gestural camera movement made using my entire body.
James Byrne
Review of this body this place Unnamed,
Dance Magazine, May 1986, by Deirdre Towers
Byrne, with camera, is an active observer, openly registering his reactions. He is playful, alternately closing in around the dancers like an imitative, unihibited child and then quietly examining them from a distance. In "this body this place Unnamed", he and Wendy Morris have created an engaging primal fantasy set in a dune. Odd close-ups, such as that of muddy fingers stumbling like a creepy crawler, are intercut with what seem to be areal shots of the figure lost in the gully of an expansive terrain.
Review of this body this place Unnamed,
by Burt Supree, Village Voice, June 2, 1987
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Wendy Morris's hooked fingers walking through grass blades can be mistaken for a crab. She moves and convulses in a vast puddle of mud, is covered with crusted dirt that identifies her face in closeup with the desolate, world's-end landscape she inhabits.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
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Phase 1981
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
From the catalogue
'Directions 1981'
by Curator Miranda McClintic​:
James Byrne's work is about the process of video and its possibilities for active observation. His chief concern in Phase is with the motion, rhythm, and pacing of sensually beautiful images derived, but much distanced, from his immediate world.
Both his sculptural, multi-motor installations and his single channel videos are structured to achieve a direct relationship with the viewer.​ All of Byrne's work actively reinterprets - in both a playful and a conceptually serious way - the distinction between illusion and reality. The interaction of the process of Byrne's video observation with the subject is the basis for this art.
Through the camera which records his own perceptions, Byrne explores how we see the world from different angles, speeds, visual patterns and in relationship to the senses of touch and hearing.​​​​​​
The video for Phase has been restored. However it is not available for viewing as a single tape on this site because it wouldn't make any sense. The complete image is a swirling mandala on four monitors. A single tape on one screen is impossible to replicate any semblance of the real piece.
James Byrne
"Phase" at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 1981
Review of Phase at P.S. 1, New York, in Artforum, September 1982 by Charles Hagen
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By the same token, part of the breathtaking, dreamlike quality of Phase stems from the contradiction of four clunky monitors floating lightly in space. The ironic challenge it poses to the dreariness of everyday TV comes from the fact that its effects depend not on esoteric technology, but on the imaginative transformation of a familiar experience. The empty center of the mandala is a reminder of the simple terms Byrne uses to create his spectacular effects." ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
"Phase" at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 1981
One Way 1979
To startling and often comic effect, Byrne's seemingly self-propelled camera scrapes, digs, probes and careens against trees, signs, sidewalk, and fences — all tactilely experienced by the viewer from the point-of-view of the assertive camera.
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One Way is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and has been screened throughout the world.
"Weather" was filmed in July 1987 in Rocky Mountain National Park between Rock Cut and Alpine Visitor Center at altitudes of 10,000 to 12,000 feet.
"Through improvised movement and camera work, Dana Reitz and I wanted to respond in real time to the sometimes harsh, sometimes beautiful conditions of the mountain terrain at high elevations. We spent two weeks in production, choosing to film only at sunrise and sunset, wanting to be inspired by the rarified air and unique light of dawn and dusk at the top of the mountain. The lighting conditions are extreme and re integrated into the piece.
Dana would select from a set of costumes in response to the environment of that day. She used a vocabulary of movement inspired the experience of the light, wind, temperature, altitude, and terrain. We pushed the limits of ourselves and the equipment in harsh and cold conditions."
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James Byrne
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Weather was commissioned by the Colorado Dance Festival, Marda Kirn, Director. We were assisted by a tenacious and talented crew of Mary Ellen Strom, Sally Berger, Jan Locketz, and Josephine Reynolds.
Bodies of Water Remembered 1988
From New American Makers, June 1989, " Video Dance: Bodies in Water" by Stephen Vitielio
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"Bodies of Water Remembered" takes the dancer/choreographer Wendy Morris into the underwater natural setting of the Florida Keys. In this tape, as in much of James Byrne's work, the human encounter and attempted assimilation with the landscape is portrayed as an action never entirely attained. The image of the performer/swimmer is sometimes inverted so that she appears to walk on water. A dreamlike soundtrack and an emphasis on light, texture, color, and composition remind us that this encounter is with the performer and water, but also with video.
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Undertow 1988
Review of Undertow, Minneapolis Star Tribune,
March 31, 1989, by Joan Timmis
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"Undertow" keeps its focus on two intertwined nude bodies - Eiko & Koma. The black and white video concentrates on the sculptural effect of curved torsos, clenched fists and knotty spines. Byrne's camera refuses to turn away and brings us delisciously into the world of these enigmatic clutching figures..
"Eiko & Koma and I developed a core vocabulary of movement, camera work, and lighting. We experimented with a variety of visual strategies. I stood very close to them with my camera held above my head.. We could all see four live monitors positioned at the perimeter and adjusted and moved using this information. Oftentimes it was difficult to tell who was moving or what was up or down. This disoriented, yet connect state, was useful and we did not try to fix or or reorient ourselves in space. The three of us moved as one."
​​James Byrne
Unforeseen Anomalies 1984
Unforeseen Anomalies was commissioned by the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati and premiered there in 1984. it was originally configured as a circle that coincided with the dome in the main gallery at CAC. This is how it premiered.
Later it was shaped into more of a clump of monitors on tilted pedestals and showed at the Haags Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag, Netherlands, 1985, as part of the World Wide Video Festival, Kijkhuis, Den Haag; and also at de Vleeshal in Middleburg, Netherlands, 1985.
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Excerpts from the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati catalogue James Byrne: Three Video Works,
by Curator Sarah Rogers-Lafferty:
Unforeseen Anomalies is, in fact, a moody evocative work composed of tilted and fragmented glimpses of downtown river bridges, Riverfront Stadium, the freeway, and buildings.
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It is not a portrait of a bustling downtown, but a visual collage of a city in an attempt to discover the essence, or in this case the irregularities of the site.
In part, the video recalls the work of other American artists, most notably, Lee Friedlander, who similarly capture the unexpected features of otherwise common places.
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Part of the dramatic tension felt in the tape is due to the progressive views of the stadium. Through carefully manipulated sequences, and compare and contrast, he transforms the stadium into an overgrown spaceship. And in some ways an empty stadium also looks like an abandoned ruin. Midway through the work, he introduces a human presence with a sequence of people mounting the steps that evokes an optimistic, less somber tone.
The success of Unforeseen Anomalies lies in Byrne's ability to confront a new environment, discover the essence and qualities of that site and transform these impressions.
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"Unforeseen Anomalies", commissioned by, and premiered at,
the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, 1984
"Unforeseen Anomalies is a moody, urban portrait which suggests impending doom or estrangement within the concrete architecture of a modern American city.
People pass through the frame like automatons, cars slide through, all going somewhere, like they were being beckoned by some force.
At the same time however, hope is never lost - moments of beauty are revealed in the most unlikely places."
James Byrne
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"Unforeseen Anomalies" at the
Haags Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag
Regardless of the Moment 1988
"Regardless of the Moment, is an "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland" inspired tale set on the streets of Manhattan in the late 1980s.
"In a looping, non-linear adventure, our nameless Character plunges down a New York City subway staircase into a puzzling underworld chamber. He encounters an authoritarian Newscaster who forces him to watch episodes from his own life on TV. Perplexing and sometimes humorous episodes follow."
"A bewildered Character searches for answers on the streets of Manhattan. In the end, the Character vanquishes the Newscaster and takes control of the camera. By doing so, he now controls the medium, the message, and himself. He escapes the underworld chamber with the camera (the real oppressor) and walks away with a stronger sense of self.​​"
​James Byrne