Projects 102 was like a huge integrated mashup of Neil Beloufa’s different works. It incorporated his sculpture furniture, his film People’s passion, lifestyle, beautiful wine, gigantic glass towers all surrounded by water, as well as the many different ways of viewing it, and a bunch of his other pieces throughout the installation. I didn’t want to leave until I understood exactly what was going on. And there was a lot going on. He created many different ways for you to consume his film. Each different form of viewing the film visually was tied together with one soundtrack.
What I observed is that there are hidden cameras inside little domes with seemingly random magazine clippings, little sculptures, drawings and objects stuck all over the clear dome. These seem random but aren’t because the little cameras capture the necessary images inside the dome to sync up with the narration of the movie of the imaginary place that was being described by the actors in the film. So if they were referring to “wine” the little camera would turn to the picture cutout of wine glasses and transmit that image to the television screen and it would get overlapped and spun around with other relevant dome-pieces as the narrators went on with their descriptions.
At the center of it all is a huge moving sculpture that refracts the projection of the film on to different Plexiglas panels. And in a somewhat separate room the film is playing in it’s original form on a screen. It is because of this screen that I was able to understand everything that was going on with the entire project.