Street
Artist: Jamie Nares (British, Born London, 1953 (Lives and works in New York))
Date: 2011
Medium: HD Video, Music by Thurston Moore
Classification: Time-Based Media
Credit Line: Museum Purchase, by exchange and Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott
Object number: 2019.4
Label Text:Inspired by Thomas Edison’s “actualities” films (akin to documentary film) and early cinema pioneers like the Lumière brothers, Street chronicles ordinary street scenes from a day in New York City in September 2011. A native of London who has lived in New York since 1974, Jamie Nares describes the video as “a love letter to my adopted home.” A diverse array of individuals from all walks of life move through the city in slow-motion, allowing us to investigate movement, space, and the relationship between people and the environment around them—and to contemplate our own relationship with time and our surroundings.
To make Street Nares shot 16 hours of footage from a moving SUV with a high-speed camera at a rate of between 500 and 1000 frames per second. She then greatly slowed the footage and edited the results down to 61 minutes of steady, continuous motion—which, if shown in real time, would last only three minutes. “My intention,” she explained, “was to give the dreamlike impression of floating through a city full of people frozen in time, caught Pompeii-like, at a particular moment of thought, expression, or activity….”
Nares’ friend Thurston Moore, co-founder of pioneering “noise rock” band Sonic Youth, composed and performed the video’s musical score.
To make Street Nares shot 16 hours of footage from a moving SUV with a high-speed camera at a rate of between 500 and 1000 frames per second. She then greatly slowed the footage and edited the results down to 61 minutes of steady, continuous motion—which, if shown in real time, would last only three minutes. “My intention,” she explained, “was to give the dreamlike impression of floating through a city full of people frozen in time, caught Pompeii-like, at a particular moment of thought, expression, or activity….”
Nares’ friend Thurston Moore, co-founder of pioneering “noise rock” band Sonic Youth, composed and performed the video’s musical score.
On view