The Subscription

Crèche Into Me (2023)

The Subscription

Creche into me was a video sculpture installed in the Art Center Galleries for December 2023's Open Studios. The work consists of two monitors, one home-built and the other a Zenith sourced from the year of the artists' births (1991). The home-built monitor is fixed to a tripod looming precariously over the CRT below. A small, neon-painted nativity figurine (or "crèche") rests atop the Zenith, emitting a plasticky recording of yuletide carols. The top monitor runs a program that constantly opens "Christmas Fireplace" videos downloaded from Youtube. It then screen-captures itself and saves the files back into the folder from which it's playing the videos. This results in a recursive program that becomes more and more complex and glitchy the longer it runs. The lower monitor displays a miniature Christmas Tree under a disco light, interspersed with video of the neon green crèche. This video was recorded using a 1989 Panasonic VHS REPORTER MODEL AG-HT4. The artifacts of this camera's aging digital zoom system represent the only effects applied to the video. The lower monitor rests on a pile of tinsel and the entire scene is lit by the disco light from the lower monitor's video.