Tales of Love and Fear

Lucy Raven’s residency at EMPAC focused on her research into the history and evolution of 3D-film technologies. Raven investigated the fluid cultural perception of the form’s use of spatial depth, and uncovered the mechanisms of industrial cinema production through analysis of the transnational circulation of labor and materials. The culmination of this research, Tales of Love and Fear, is an EMPAC-commissioned, site-specific artwork for the Concert Hall. Conceived as a cinema for a single image, Tales of Love and Fear expands and unifies our perception of the cinematic beyond the screen. Working with EMPAC’s production team, Raven developed a custom-built rig of counter-rotating platforms, on which two projectors are used to split the left and right eye of a single stereoscopic photograph taken by the artist during her research in India.

Lucy Raven’s work has been included in exhibitions and screenings internationally including Curtains, Portikus, Frankfurt, and Yerba Buena, San Francisco; Hammer Projects, the Hammer Museum, LA; Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and 11 Rooms, Manchester International Festival, Manchester, UK. She teaches at the Cooper Union School of Art and the School of Visual Arts in New York City.