Lina Dib
THRESHOLD, 2017
Projectors, Generative media
Lina Dib uses her environment and new technologies as raw materials to stage immersive and participatory encounters. The resulting compositions encourage viewers to rethink notions of power, interconnectedness, ecology and home. THRESHOLD is an interactive audiovisual installation centered on the gulf shore. It is set to just before sunset, at the pinkish cusp of something about to go down. The video slows, the audio slows to a deep rumble, and the color desaturates as viewers approach the screen. When the video is at a near standstill, viewers ‘liquify’ the image with their bodies.
The shore features largely in Dib’s work, its infinitely poetic qualities, a constant ebb and flow, a collision of bodies, land and sea. THRESHOLD is a kind of homage to Thierry Kuntzel’s Wave and to Andy Warhol’s Sunsets. Mostly, it is a tribute, a meditation, on the specificities of place and on our relationship to natural systems. This piece is part of a larger series of toxic and luring landscapes. Based on the BP oil spill (2010), the largest environmental disaster in US history, and Hurricane Harvey (2017) that spilled countless toxins into the gulf, THRESHOLD reflects on the deleterious ways we separate ourselves from nature. In a sense, the piece gestures to our clumsy attempts to push back nature and to presume we can control things so large they border on the unfathomable.
Programming: Taylor Knapps.
Premiered at DAY FOR NIGHT 2017, and shown at Galveston Arts Center, November 24, 2018 – January 13, 2019.
Special Thanks to our crew:
Colin Hendee, Kim Clarady, Kendall Knapps,
Daniel Campos, Bob Lane, Eric Malin, Chris (The Electrician), Richard (The Carpet Man)
Press and Reviews:
Glasstire Top Five. 2018. “Rainey Knudson and Brandon Zech on an interactive beach in Galveston, a gaggle of art collectives in Fort Worth, and a show of blue bloods in Houston,” Dec. 6
Lucas, P. 2018. “Art Experiences at Day for Night 2017,” Glasstire, Jan. 1.
Rodriguez, T. 2017. “Event Coverage: Day For Night,” MACG Magazine, Dec. 24.
2017. “The Most Stunning Pieces From Day For Night Aren’t on Instagram,” Texas Monthly, Dec. 21.
Stapley-Brown, V. 2017. “High-Tech art in Houston: data-driven installation look at issues like Hurricane Harvey and mass incarceration,” The Art Newspaper, Dec. 18.
BWW News Desk, 2017. “Photo Flash: DAY FOR NIGHT Proves #HoustonStrong featuring Solange, Ryoji Ikeda, Nine Inch Nails, Cardi B and More,” Broadway World, Dec. 18.
Pasori, C. 2017. “How Art is Revolutionizing the Music Festival,” Vice: Garage, Dec. 13.
Middendorf, P. 2017. “Getting To Know the Artists: Lina Dib at Day for Night,” Free Press Houston, Dec. 7.