Tetragammaton
2010, 23:00, 2-channel installation

Tetragrammaton
2009, 23:00
video and sound by Cecilia Dougherty

In 1973, sculptor Frank Gillette made a 23-minute videotape called Tetragrammaton at a beach near New York. It is one element of a six-part video installation called Six Matrices, from 1971 - 73. Gilette's camera focuses on ripples in the sand, driftwood, shells, and feathers and then swings out wildly to a long shot of the sea and the horizon. At one point, Gillette swings the camera 360-degrees, and at other points he stays glued to one small object in the sand, defining with his camerawork the body of the artist as well as his surroundings.

While capturing video with my cell phone at Brighton Beach in Brooklyn one day, the blurred and pixelated images began to remind me of Frank Gillette's videotape. His title refers to an archaic Hebrew word formed by the four letters YHWH, representing the name of the god, a name too sacred to be spoken aloud, and a word that only a few people from each generation are taught to pronounce.

I went back to the beach for the next few days with Frank Gillette in mind and edited this piece from cell-phone files that I had emailed to myself and downloaded to edit. Tetragrammaton, is a response to Frank Gillette. In making this video, I began to see the function of the spiritual as separated from the funciton of the philosophical, and dissociated from myth, morality, rationalizations, or systems of belief.

watch complete video on vimeo >