Single channel rendering of installation by Rian Brown, 2005. Breadcrumbs, 2005 Triple projection digital video installation. 20 minutes. Directed, filmed and edited by Rian Brown. About the search for “home” and a meditation on the condition of physical transience. Based loosely on the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, a woman scatters breadcrumbs throughout time and space in attempt to be able to find her way back home. Rear-projected into the windows and doorway of the façade of a “house”. The images are seen through the threshold of the windows and doorway of a symbolic house.
Video excerpt from the center view of a three channel installation.
Breadcrumbs, 2005
Breadcrumbs was commissioned by the Allen Art Museum for an exhibition Traces and Lines: New Work at Oberlin and is about the search for “home”, and a meditation on the condition of physical transience. Based loosely on the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, a woman scatters breadcrumbs through dozens of landscapes throughout time and space in attempt to be able to find her way back home. In an attempt to comprehend that home isn’t a place, but a state of mind, the film weaves together the three stages of the woman’s life, with the metamorphosis of a butterfly. The project was created over a three year period, in which the filmmaker traveled to back to the many places she had lived. In attempt to understand the impact of “rootlessness” she decided to enact a ritual of leaving breadcrumbs in these landscapes across the globe as a personal investigation of memory and place. These events became a part of a larger film, which attempts to unravel the nostalgia about home as a location, and ultimately reveals that home is a state of mind.
