Carolyn Lambert
Aerosol Parasol Jump, 2021, HD video
Aerosol Parasol Jump is a video in which thumbs, fore-fingers, and Q-tips approach the vacancy left by the decline of reliable agents of propagation. Human pollinators reach into the screen, caress, poke and brush the delicate pistils and stamen of fruit and vegetable blossoms. Images hover and blend together. The video is a montage of hand-shot and appropriated images that weave together the blur and shakiness of the mobile phone with the deterioration of downloads, and the prescriptive and impersonal character of stock footage with amateur instructional videos.
My work is influenced by the traditions of experimental video, performance for video, and the essay film. I often use material associated with the genre of nature documentary (for example, extreme close-ups of insects) in combination with more ambiguous or prosaic footage common to experimental documentary and essay filmmaking, and appropriated materials gathered through research. My approach to structure combines disparate sources in an intentional effort to stitch together the fragmented condition of contemporary experience into a constellation integrating the personal and the social.
Carolyn Lambert is an artist working in video, installation and performance. Her work engages with the vulnerability of living in a time of environmental turmoil and mass extinction. Lambert (American) has exhibited in the US and internationally at venues such as the Drawing Center, Eyebeam, and SculptureCenter in New York, Habitat Gallery in Denmark, and La Mirage, Montreal. Screenings of her work have occurred at the Athens International Film and Video Festival, OH; European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück, Germany; the Bomb Factory, UK; and MUMOK, Vienna. She teaches digital media as an Assistant Professor at Kean University in New Jersey.