Sticky Floors (Lunch to Last Call)

In her work, Ann-Sofi Sidén throughly embraces the video technique of surveillance cameras that observe different activities of people in one space, which reminds of a classical concept of surveillance or the modern notion of a ‘Big Brother.’ Sticky Floors shows nondescript 24 hours of a pub in Ireland. Through nine surveillance cameras, the owner of the pub and its customers are observed. In presenting moments in lives of diverse types of people and almost boring scenes from monotonous daily routines, the artist shows them in a manner of ‘carving the time’ as if she prunes a tree and trim its branches. She does so by composing images and editing the source video, rather than using the original video as it is. Installed with objects that include beer glasses, nine monitors, and trays used in a pub, the work invites its viewers to ‘observe’ the lives of those that appear in the video from certain distance and eye-level for watching a video installation.