Machine Oil Smells Sweet

Suzanne Silver's installation and video (with a score by Sivan Silver-Swartz) respond to Maria Fusco’s poem Machine Oil Smells Sweet, transforming light and shadow to illuminate, blur, and dissolve images of labor, dreams, and time.

From the artist:

"I made videos and photograms as an oblique response to one of Maria Fusco’s iterations of her poem called "Machine Oil Smells Sweet". I reacted to ideas in the poem of labor, factory piecework, dreams, and time. The music, composed by Sivan Silver-Swartz based on percussion instruments, echoed this interpretation. Silver-Swartz’s score is performed by instrumentalists Kevin Good and Katie Eikam.

I made the largely text-based work with a cell phone camera and recorded light passing through punctures in foil or marks on vinyl which cast shadows. I experimented with light and shadow and how its timing creates chance effects of illuminating, dissolving, multiplying, blurring, and the gradual disappearing of the image. At the heart of these explorations is my search for a visual means of translation.

The accompanying installation, composed of glass, salt, chalk, and foil, further investigates time in the form of clocks in different phases of effacement."

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Made possible in part by an investment of public funds from the Ohio Arts Council (OAC).