The fixed camera, placed upside down, films Bruce Nauman. With his arms held over his head, hands crossed, he is moving jerkily around a perimeter defined by a square drawn on the studio floor. As is often the case with his films and videos shot with a fixed camera, the artist's body is only partially shown, and it becomes progressively harder to identify as he moves towards the camera. Sometimes he disappears completely from the field of view leaving the spectator before an empty space, where only the sound of the artist's footsteps and breathing indicate his presence.

At the beginning of the action, Bruce Nauman is simply walking around the square, then his movements become more and more elaborate. He moves about the room in concentric circles, diagonals, zigzags and figures of eight. The circles he traces on the floor with his footsteps become wider and wider until they disappear from our field of view only to reappear on the other side of the screen. Sometimes we only see his feet or legs or arms.

The artist moves very quickly, and the slight variations of his jerky steps and his panting create a certain sense of music. Here, space is completely filled, it vibrates, it resounds, it becomes pure rhythm. In an interview about his video work, Bruce Nauman explains, "My problem was to make tapes that go on and on, with no beginning or end. I wanted the tension of waiting for something to happen, and then you should just get drawn into the rhythm of the thing." [1]

The body is roughly treated. It floats weightlessly in space, like an abstract figure, before the disorientated spectator. Here, time and space are disturbed, stretched, bringing about a momentary loss of normal references.

His preoccupation with duration and time, and his precision and rigour within the parameters of his work, remain essential elements in Bruce Nauman's work.

Cristina Ricupero

1 Jane Livingston quoting Bruce Nauman in the catalogue, Bruce Nauman: Work from 1965 to 1972, Los Angeles / New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art / The Whitney Museum of American Art, 1972, p. 26.