With outrageous, erotic metaphors and cases of teenage psychosexual neuroses, “EVOL” embodies Neven Lochhead’s fascination with videos not constrained by day-to-day logic.

A Syracuse University instructor for a video sketchbook class, Lochhead shows his students videos such as “EVOL” to break down their expectations of what is possible in film. The class, he said, is about approaching the concepts of video and reimagining the technology of video as an experimental art form.

Originally from Ontario, Canada, Lochhead came to Syracuse as a graduate student in the Masters of Fine Arts program. Lochhead said his class has been about bringing students into a new way of thinking.

“(We) break the urge to be narrative,” Lochhead said. “And then enter the murky territory of experimentation”.

As a video artist himself, Lochhead gained some initial insight into this territory from a team of video art professors at SU, Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby. The team’s 2001 video, “Being F*cked Up,” is an exploration of drugs, sex and self-loathing.

“I saw the ability of video to touch different types of expression,” Lochhead said. “It’s kind of a thick soup of video.”

Lochhead has since produced his own version of “soupy” videos, one of which he calls “The Shared Universe and Its Discontents,” a video he made by recycling clips of the London Olympics swimming pool. In this video, Lochhead is lying in bed, slowly fading into the London Olympics scene, eventually encompassing the entire pool. Lochhead said he addresses the crowd in a poetic ode before fading off as the moon arrives to speak with the crowd.

“I’m interested in metaphors that overextend themselves,” Lochhead said.

But Lochhead has also recently evolved his style of video making. After traveling to Italy and hearing critiques of his work from different artists, Lochhead decided he needed to reduce the number of different elements within his work.

Now, Lochhead is preparing to meet Isaac Julien, a celebrated filmmaker, at the upcoming Urban Video Project event at the Everson Museum of Art. He said this exhibition will serve as an opportunity for him and his students to continue exploring the changing nature of video art, which Lochhead said has never quite settled into a formula.

Said Lochhead: “It lets you imagine things that you haven’t imagined before, see things you would have overlooked. It lets you extend your borders of what is possible.”

Published on October 1, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Jesse: jlnich02@syr.edu