Moving Exhibit Speaks Out on TV’s Pros,...

Moving Exhibit Speaks Out on TV’s Pros, Cons

Video artist Anne Bray turned off her television set in 1968 and hasn’t watched since.

“In some ways, I’ve always felt different, alienated from the world,” said Bray, 41. “And mass media, especially television news, actually heightened my sense of alienation. It made me feel so disconnected .”

Yet the very device that Bray shuns is also the creative catalyst for her current installation project at Cal State Northridge, “Easy Chair, Electric Chair.”

In the exhibit, Bray and actress/performance artist Molly Cleator not only dissect the pros and cons of television but dig into its greater relationship with society and morals.

How do they accomplish this? Here’s the visual setup:

Two motorized wheelchairs are in perpetual motion. The first, Easy, loops and glides along in large, almost graceful circles while the other, Electric, buzzes with frantic and aggressive energy. Both are equipped with television monitors showing head shots of Bray and Cleator. Bray is seen out of focus in the Electric chair, to match her more strident tone. Cleator, looking soft yet clear, talks from the monitor in the Easy chair, her conversation setting a more upbeat tempo.

As the chairs move in their separate patterns, the screens engage in a continuous, taped two-way conversation.

“Our conversation slides around, exposing both of us to the bone,” Bray said. “The media theme is really a subplot for more universal matters about community and connection.”

Initially, Bray and Cleator outlined topics and themes on index cards. In July, they began recording their unscripted conversations lasting as long as four hours. They eventually edited them down to an hour the last week of February.

The installation and the conversation have “changed so much since the beginning. But that’s what art is about, changing and learning. Constant movement,” said Bray, now a video art instructor at Pomona College.

“I’m excited about this installation. There’s so much to think about. So much irony. Everything is challenged,” said Louis Lewis, CSUN gallery director since 1980.

“In our personal lives, Molly and I take opposite approaches. She listens, watches and is completely emerged in the media world so that she can understand where others are coming from. It gives her a sense of knowledge. Some sort of completion,” said Bray of her partner, who recently appeared as the assistant principal in the film “Kindergarten Cop.”

“Anne totally rejects mass media and she does it with force,” said Cleator, 32. “For this piece she talks about the alienation she experiences from TV. Then she explores how it manipulates, and why she shuts it out completely.”

The two artists, who met at UCLA, have known each other for eight years. They have worked on this project for five years, receiving grants from the city of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation.

“Easy Chair, Electric Chair,” a video installation by Anne Bray and Molly Cleator, continues through March 15 at Cal State Northridge’s North Gallery, 18111 Nordhoff St. Hours are noon to 4 p.m. Mondays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays. Call (818) 885-2226.