ART/London
“Lies”
Through March 12th

”Lies” is a minimal but powerful video installation. There is only one element shown against the sky's background -- a flag -- but there are many different meanings associated with this thin strip of fabric.

In the video, Cagol elaborates on the symbology of the Stars and Stripes in particular; the flag stirred by the wind becomes something menacing, or the exact opposite -- it takes on the aspect of a butterfly and of a heart, its message continuously transformed. The extreme, continuous and complex mutability of the image symbolizes the unstable political situation of the world we live in.

The video is 25 minutes long, composed of fragments of random length, between ten seconds and five minutes. There are five seconds of black between each fragment, but the sequence doesn’t follow a clear narrative progression; the fragments are always different; the background of the sky, the distance of the flag from the viewer, the light patterns, effect of the wind, are all different.

The end is sudden, and always the same – the image blurs, develops through a zoom effect, and finally invades the entire screen.

The soundtrack was created using found audio recording the sounds of traffic on New York City streets, slowed down and altered by reverb.

Stefano Cagol comments on his work: ”The continuous aesthetic mutability of a flag -- in this case the American one -- moved by the wind make me think about the changeability, the insecurity of ideals, of promises, of truth that all seem wrong, that all seem to be ‘Lies’. It makes me think how harshly a man can fight and die for the simple name of one flag. At this moment, I think in particular about the States, they try by any means to convince the world that their projects of war are only for truth and for peace.”

This exhibition is the first step of a public art project about the symbolic meaning of flags, which will run through other cities with the collaboration of international art spaces in Tokyo and New York.

Find it: Platform
3 Wilkes Street
London, UK
Get info: +44 (0)207-375-2973

Find out about art events in other cities, in the FEB/MAR 2005 issue of "Arte Six."