The Shadowers

This three screen video installation creates a series of disquieting tableaus that present visions of three characters engaged in a game like narrative and whose roles and identities shift and blur between attacker and victim and all that could be the same in between. In an articulation of a ‘schizophrenic understanding of the self’ Tichacek presents an image of oscillating inner world’s where physical and mental experience fluctuate and escape simple definition in the parameters of physical and emotional manipulations and violence (Exhibition proposal). In a thematic echo of and engagement with technological advancements in bodily modification, the victim, played by the artist, is submitted to a range of intrusive and physical molding actions at the hands of the other characters, set in lush outdoor settings as well as in a dark and clinical interior. Suspended in a triangular fashion and surrounding a sculptural object, the viewer can move between and behind the synchronised screens, the physical and psychological shifts of identity featured in the video mirrored in the viewer’s own fluctuating experience of the work as they become variously immersed in or distanced from the disturbingly beautiful and new but fragile ‘prosthetic’ space the game narrative articulates. Static and inarticulate frequencies, or white noise, layer the visuals in place of the characters’ speech and screams and create an aural sense of distortion and displacement for the viewer in the use of surround sound.