Press Release:

Scotophobia
Launa Bacon
2004
on-site video installation
sound by Drew Schnurr www.deusonica.com

Scotophobia is a peptide produced in the brain of lab rats conditioned to fear darkness. Fear is produced by the injection of the peptide into the animals’ brain chemistry, providing empirical evidence for the theory that memory has a chemical basis.

Scotophobia is a mixed-media installation exploring the exploitation of fear in politics, religion and the media, and how that fear affects our everyday lives. The installation conveys a sense of apocalypse, created through the utilization of the existing physical character of this raw interior space, which is an ideal location for the work – placing the piece in the desolate downtown Los Angeles nightscape.

Politicians regularly use the threat of enemies, such as that of terrorist acts demolishing our cities, in order to gain political advantage, or to achieve a personal political agenda. This tactic has been employed with alarming regularity throughout history. Scotophobia is an exploration of both the nature and use of this weaponry.
Scotophobia is grounded by a central sculpture – a kinetic arrangement of white and clear trash, moving rhythmically in the breeze created by adjacent fans.

Video projected through this mass creates eerily beautiful, and oddly hypnotic shadows. These projections explore how fear manifests itself in everyday lives. Two of the installation’s four video components consist of actual 9/11 footage; the third is footage of guinea pigs on the dirt floor of a Peruvian home (where the rodent represents a cheap, quickly renewed food source); the fourth video is of religious icons and sculptures, from footage seductively following the lines of the body of a reclining Jesus to a sculpture of Jesus sick in bed.

Scotophobia is on public view nightly from dusk until dawn, and will run for one month from November 6th-December 9th 2004.

Sponsored by Art In Motion, the USC School of Fine Arts’ international festival of time-based media