The Window Series
Shannon Plumb
Location:
The Windows Series will be projected onto second story windows and can be seen from the sidewalk at the corner of Front and Washington Streets and Front and Adams Streets.
The Window Series is presented by Smack Mellon for the Dumbo Arts Festival, a weekend-long neighborhood arts festival featuring exciting outdoor projects, open studios and special exhibitions.
Since falling in love with the silence of her very first Super 8 film, storytelling without dialogue has become the perfect medium for Shannon Plumb’s dynamic physical humor and witty characterizations. The Window Series, inhabits vacant second floor windows at various locations with life-size video projections of Plumb’s hilarious cast of unusual characters. Working as a one-woman show, Plumb prepares the sets and costumes and then convincingly assumes the role of each character as she shoots the HD videos with long single-takes. While questioning the idea of personal space, the humorous videos invite a sense of voyeurism as they provide an intimate look into the private lives of Plumb’s imagined characters.
Shannon Plumb
“Cities are full of windows. As we walk to work and run our errands the buildings we pass become the sets on a fantastic stage. Glimpsing at someone else’s life is intriguing and exciting. When given the chance to watch a stranger some of us will stop and stare through a window.
The Window Series is a series of videos, rear projected from within a building onto its’ own windows. I play a variety of characters as seen voyeur style by people passing by who view the projections from the street. The characters in the videos appear to be living or working in an apartment or business in the building.
These videos represent the differences and similarities of city dwellers. The woman with a burqa battling the heat; the mother with two children trying to get out of the apartment; the sports fan exhibiting triumph and defeat while watching a game on TV. I use humor as bait to catch a glance from pedestrians standing at an intersection or from a taxi driver waiting in traffic. I hope it will create a dialogue between strangers passing by. I hope they find themselves laughing and excited like children secretly peeping through a keyhole.”
Shannon Plumb was born in Schenectady, New York, and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad as well as in group shows including Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video, Curated by Lauren Ross, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Alternating Beats, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI; Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820 – 2009, The National Academy Museum, New York, NY ; Human Game, Curated by Francesco Bonami, Maria Luisa Frisa and Stefano Tonchi, Florence, Italy; Torino Triennial, Curated by Francesco Bonami and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Torino, Italy; i-Dentity, Fashion and Textile Museum, London, UK and Greater New York 2005, PS1, Long Island City, NY, among others. Her films have also been included in national and international film festivals and screenings including 2007 Berlin Film Festival; 2007 Rotterdam Film Festival; Ocularis at 10, Museum of Modern Art, New York; 2006 London Film Festival; Scanners: 2006 New York Video Festival; 59 Festival Internazionale del Film, Locarno Switzerland; 2004 Lyon Film Festival and many more.
This project is made possible with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Concordia Foundation.
Space for this project was provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
